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Protocol – Growing Large Volume of Liquid Culture of Escherichia coli for Large-Scale Plasmid Isolation
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Large-scale isolation of plasmid requires a large volume of E. coli culture. Large scale plasmid isolation procedures are termed, midiprep (25 – 50 ml starting culture volume) and maxiprep (100 – 500 ml starting culture volume). A starter culture is initially prepared by inoculating a colony in a small volume (2 – 10 ml) of culture medium. Large culture volume is prepared by diluting starter culture in a ratio of 1: 100 to 1: 1000 in the growth medium.
Preparation of Lambda-agar medium and plates
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Lambda-agar is nothing but a lambda broth which is solidified by agar. Agar is a solidifying agent. It melts at 85°C but melton agar stays liquid at a temperature > 40°C (this property is called hysteresis, different temperatures for melting and solidifying). This allows us to add heat-labile medium supplements such as antibiotics and vitamins and prepare solid medium. Lambda-agar solid medium is prepared by dissolving 15 g agar / liter of Lambda broth.
