In my experience, I had been inserting 11kbps fragments into 8kbps plasmids. Sometimes the both ends were blunt. But it was working very well with being careful about the potential problems (like making sure the enzymes cut the DNA completely, if there is possibility that you have undigested DNA, considering the way to get rid of it....etc.)
I made chemical competent cells by myself with Rubidium (this is old method though), and It was working well. Just I made sure the efficiency (it should be more than 10^7 colonies/ug by general plasmids).
You bought the competent cells, so that efficiency should be OK. But you did not get enough efficiency by your plasmid into which you tried to insert the fragment.
It is bothering me, somehow.
You use a plasmid having different ori from general ones. Perhaps, it made different results. But the plasmid might have nicked for some reason. In this case you should purify the plasmid again.
Although I have been talking about chemical competent cells, I have to agree electropolation is an excellent method, so you do not need to stick at chemical competent cells.
I hope you will get the plasmids you want.
Good luck! |
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