Academic Scientists at Work
Plasmid File System
Appendix 4-5
The Plasmid File Storage system is designed to help you organize and find your reagents over
the course of your lifetime. Both Macintosh and PC versions written with FileMaker Pro version
7.0 are included. The file was designed in Dr. Boss’ laboratory and is in use. Modifications have
been made to make it more general. The program can be modified and expanded or used as is.
Below is a discussion of different views and the fields:
Data Entry View — This is the data entry and general search view that you should use.
 Name of Plasmid: Here you should assign a name that you will be able to place with an
individual or a reagent.
 Creator: The person who made the plasmid.
 Gene Cloned: Obvious
 Promoter: If this is an expression vector, the promoter driving the gene should be
inserted here.
 Bacterial Drug Marker: Antibiotic resistance used to select plasmid in bacteria.
 Eukaryotic Drug Marker: Antibiotic resistance marker for eukaryotic cells.
 Eukaryotic Origin of replication: If your plasmid has one, insert here.
 Size: Base pairs or kilobase pairs.
 Polylinker Restriction sites: Insert the sites here. This can be messy and you may want
to have a series of templates to handle this one. This can be set up by changing the field
definition to pop-up menu and defining a list.
 Location of plasmid: This is split into two fields, the freezer/refrigerator and which box.
Box contents should be stored in a separate file.
 Concentration of DNA: mg/ml
 Location of bacterial stock: You should keep bacterial stocks of your plasmids as it will
save you time when you have to prepare fresh DNA.
 Other name of clone: Labs tend to give all their creations several names. List those here.
 Date of Creation: Enter date the clone was verified.
 Description: Put as much information in this category as possible as it will be important
after your lab has created or collected 300 plasmids.
 Plasmid Map: The current picture was pasted from a DNA mapping program in Vector
NTITM.
The Sort and Find buttons will help you move through the database.
List View — Allows you to print out all your plasmids with their location. You can sort these by
any of the fields shown.