Help: Transfection into mammalian cells

[Sean Davidson]

jing at milton.u.washington.edu (Jing Huang) writes:

>Hi, I am trying to co-transfect 2 plasmids into both 3T3 (fibroblasts) 
>and C2 (myoblasts) cells.  I am doing transient transfection and I need
>to be able to control both the ratio of the 2 plasmids and the absolute
>copy number of each plasmid inside a single cell.  The ratio can be 
>achieved by the calcium phosphate method which gets multiple copies of 
>plasmids into a cell, while electroporation usually gets only 1 copy of 
>plasmid into each cell.  Does anyone know how to limit the copies of 
>DNA molecules in the Ca method?  and how to get more than 1 but defined 
>number of plasmids by electroporation?  Thanks! and I will post a summary.

I don't know if this method will be any better, but a rep from Boehringer
recently told me they now sell a kit for transfection which used
liposomes. Sorry I don't know any more but I'm sure they will gladly
tell you about it.
Sean