A versatile bulk electrotransfection protocol for mouse embryonic fibroblast and iPS cells

Abstract

A square-wave pulsing protocol was developed using OptiMEM-GlutaMAX for high efficient transfection of mouse embryonic fibroblast (MEF) and induced pluripotency stem (iPS) cells. An electrotransfection efficiency of > 95% was repeated for both MEF and iPS cells using reporter-encoding plasmids. The protocol was very efficient for plasmid size ranging from 6.2 to 13.5 kb. A high rate of targeted gene knockout (> 95 %) was produced in Venus transgenic cells using indels formation. Targeted deletions in the Venus transgene were performed by co-electroporation of two gRNA-encoding plasmids. In conclusion, this plasmid electrotransfection protocol is straight-forward, cost-effective, and efficient for CRISPRing mouse primary cells.