The process of introducing exogenous genetic material (DNA or RNA) into eukaryotic cells is called transfection. Common transfection methods are divided into viral transfection, physical transfection, and chemical transfection. The main limitations of the viral transfection method include viral tropism, the size of the viral genome, and potential immunogenicity and oncogenesis. Physical transfection methods, such as electroporation or microinjection, are costly and have limited applications. Especially, microinjection, a high-tech and low-throughput method, is not suitable for transfecting a large number of cells. Calcium phosphate precipitation is one of the most cost-effective chemical transfection methods. However, it is usually less efficient and more sensitive to experimental conditions, resulting in poor reproducibility and limited applicability.
Lipid Transfection
Liposome-mediated transfection, commonly referred to as lipid transfection, is a widely used non-viral method for introducing genetic material into cells. Compared with other methods such as viral transduction and physical methods, lipid transfection has higher safety, suitability for various cell types, and the ability to delivering various cargo types, from small oligonucleotides to large plasmid DNA. Compared to microinjection, lipid transfection is a relatively straightforward and reproducible method. These characteristics make it an ideal choice for in vitro research and in vivo therapeutic applications.
METAFECTENE® Transfection Reagents
Amerigo Scientific offers METAFECTENE® transfection reagents based on liposome technology, which are composed of a mixture of polycationic and neutral lipids. The unique bilayer molecular structure of the cationic lipids can aggregate DNA or RNA into compact structures, forming DNA or RNA-lipid complexes to enter the cells. In cells, the built-in endosome buffering system ensures the release of DNA or RNA.
Advantages of METAFECTENE® Transfection Reagents
- Ready-to-use solution form
- Low toxicity
- Free from serum inhibition
- Suitable for transfection of sensitive cell lines
Product Range
METAFECTENE® PRO, METAFECTENE® EASY, METAFECTENE® SI, and METAFECTENE® FluoR are advanced products based on the improvement of METAFECTENE®. Depending on their different characteristics, they each have their own advantages in specific applications.
- METAFECTENE® PRO is a transfection reagent with high efficiency and low toxicity due to the structural optimization of the cationic lipids. After quality testing, the use of METAFECTENE® PRO can significantly improve the transfection efficiency, even in cell lines with high requirements for transfection sensitivity.
- METAFECTENE® EASY works with a predefined DNA/lipid ratio, eliminating the need for a cumbersome optimization process and enabling efficient DNA transfection. Using the METAFECTENE® EASY kit enables highly efficient transfection to be achieved in mammalian cell lines and primary cells, without the need for extensive optimization efforts.
- METAFECTENE® SI is a transfection reagent designed specifically for delivering siRNA or miRNA into mammalian cells. It enables the transfection process to be performed with minimized non-target effects, and ensures high cell survival rates by using a very small amount of reagents.
- METAFECTENE® FluoR is a rhodamine B-labeled reagent used for DNA transfection in eukaryotic cells. By using the METAFECTENE® FluoR fluorescent-labeled transfection reagent, the transfection process can be tracked and evaluated using fluorescence microscopy or fluorescence-activated cell sorting (FACS).
Applications of METAFECTENE®
In the experiments of transfecting pCMV-Luc into different cell lines under optimized conditions, the relative light units (RLU) obtained after transfection using METAFECTENE® PRO were 30% to 80% higher than those obtained using L2K.
Figure 1. Comparison of METAFECTENE® PRO with L2K transfection reagent
The following two images illustrate the fluorescence observed in the cells after transfection with pCMV-eGFP using METAFECTENE® FluoR. The images show the endocytosis process of the red fluorescent liposomes within the cells and their aggregation near the cell nucleus.
Figure 2. Fluorescence in cells transfected with pCMV-eGFP using METAFECTENE® FluoR
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