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Service Request Procedure

Please contact Zhanyuan Zhang via e-mail (zhangzh@missouri.edu), by phone (573-882-6922), or meet in our transformation lab to discuss your service request.

After the initial contact, we will send you a service contract and an invoice for payment. After receiving the signed contract and payment, we will start transformation experiments. If you are located outside the state of Missouri, please contact USDA-APHIS (http://www.aphis.usda.gov/) as soon as possible, to request permission for cross-state movement of transgenic materials.

You will need to subclone your gene expression cassette into our binary vector pZY101, pZY101.2, pFGC5941(-), or pFGC5941 dependent on the promoter you will use. Off-campus users are required to sign a Material Transfer Agreement sheet to use any of these vectors. We will mobilize the vector into Agrobacterium cells and confirm its integrity within the cells at a charge of $50/vector confirmation.

The time frame from the start of experiments to the harvest of transgenic seeds is about seven to nine months, dependent on plant species and seasons.

Service Note

Below is a list of what we would like to communicate with our users so the requirements and expectations will be clear before the service experiments start.

To minimize costs for both users and our facility, an average number of 10 events per construct will be generated for users. For example: if users require 10 events per construct we will generate an average of 10 events per construct, instead of at least 10 events per construct. However, the probability of the number of events less than users require will be minimal.
The facility's responsibility is to warrant the presence of genes of user's interest but not the expression level. This expectation is based on the complexity of gene expression and the user's choice of gene expression systems.
Standard time for service deliverables: The normal service deliverables are: the first young seedlings of transgenic soybeans will become ready for sampling at about four months, and dry seeds of first transgenic line will be ready in about six to seven months after the first service experiment starts. Subsequent delivery will take place in additional months because each experiment takes at least six months from start to completion. The standard delivery time of maize service deliverables takes even longer because of the longer tissue culture period required for maize somatic embryogenesis.
When users confirm the vector integrity within the Agrobacterium, PCR-based confirmation will no longer be considered as a valid proof, and users are highly recommended to show digestion of the final transformation vector rescued from bacterial cells carrying the gene of interest. This new requirement will benefit users as well as our operation because of more thorough examination of those steps before the transformation experiments start.
Orientation of user's expression cassette relative to the plant selectable marker (bar gene cassette in our case): Users are highly recommended to choose the orientation in which the promoter of the user's expression cassette is adjacent to the promoter of the plant selectable marker. Also, users are encouraged to use the alternative vector pZY101.2 if our standard service vector pZY101 won't allow them to achieve the correct orientation.