Can I use a retroviral vector to perform regular plasmid transfections?
Can I use a retroviral vector to perform regular plasmid transfections?
Yes. You can use a retroviral vector as a regular plasmid, via transfection. However, this negates one of the advantages of retroviral transduction: reproducible integration of individual copies of your transgene. During stable integration, plasmid vectors break randomly and integrate into the cellular genome nonspecifically with respect to the original vector backbone. By contrast, proviral DNA from a retrovirus is integrated into the transduced cell's genome precisely via the 5' and 3' LTRs, ensuring the integrity and linearity of the integrated expression construct.