【Yeastern】ECOS™ 1 Min Transformation Competent Cells

ECOS™ Competent Cells are the first innovative products of Yeastern Biotech’s R&D team, which strives to bring noble products that make research faster and easier. ECOS™ is Yeastern Biotech’s registered trademark in USA, Japan, Canada, Korea, and Taiwan. The name speaks for the merits of this line of products - E. Coli One-Step transformation. The reverse of this name is SOCE – SOC Eliminated. ECOS™ protocol allows users to finish the transformation within one step and to skip the SOC recovery step. Therefore, ECOS™ competent cells are the fastest transforming cells worldwide. The traditional protocol requires recovery step and takes 1 ~ 2 hours to finish, but ECOS™ allows transformation to be finished within 1 minute and the procedures are a lot simpler. Please check the ECOS™ protocol section.

The latest progress in the ECOS™ product section is the development of another 3 protocols in addition to the standard ECOS™ protocol that was first introduced in 2003. The non-heat shock protocol allows transformation to be further simplified, and the 2 ~ 6-minute protocol enhances transformation efficiency significantly. These protocols have been developed based on the results of numerous experiments involving different antibiotics, plasmid size, and various conditions. Now, Yeastern Biotech offers our customers a new ECOS™ competent cells with similar transformation efficiency to that of electroporation for applications which require very high transformation efficiency such as the construction of genomic libraries.

ECOS™ competent cells should be stored in a – 70°C freezer. Since competent cells are very sensitive to freezethaw cycles, exposure to temperature variations should be minimized. In order to control the quality of competent cells, Yeastern Biotech adds electronic temperature monitors to record the temperature during the shipping process. Yeastern Biotech is the only company that offers this service.

Yeastern Biotech Co., Ltd. owns the patent of ECOS™ technology (including protocol) exclusively in Canada (TMA622,671), USA (US 6,864,088, US 7,098,033, US 7,820,443), UK (GB2383582), German (Nr. 102 51 429), France (FR 2832727), Taiwan (I 229696), China (ZL 2005 1 0112590.8), Korea (0604787, 10-1350283), and Japan (4867595). Under the protection of this patent, Yeastern Biotech is the only company that has the right to use the protocol with the claims that transformation with our ECOS™ chemically competent cells can be finished within one minute and SOC is not needed. If any one intends to sell competent cells that use ECOS™ protocol or its similar version, please contact our headquarter in Taiwan for licensing.

• No LB/SOC required

• Revolutionary 1- or 6-minute transformation, instead of 1 ~ 2 hours

• Procedures are simplified

• Several protocols to choose from according to your needsin efficiency and convenience

• Strict QC process to check the efficiency of each batch produced

• Ideal for bench users to automatize cloning projects

• Electronically monitored shipping process to check temperature fluctuation during shipping

Each lot of competent cells has to pass three quality control tests before shipping:

1. Efficiency test : each batch of ECOS™ should meet the claimed transformation efficiency at the time of production using Protocol 1 or 3 (Page 3-2) and supercoiled pUC19 DNA.

2. Contamination test : competent cells were plated directly on ampicillin plates without being transformed. To pass the test, no colonies should be seen after overnight incubation.

3. A-complementation test : this test is performed for all ECOS™ competent cells except for ECOS™ 21(DE3) and ECOS™ 2163. To pass the test, the ratio of white colonies over the total colonies should be less than 3%.