Overview of chemical transfection methods

Name: Overview of chemical transfection methods
Creator: AAT Bioquest
License: https://www.aatbio.com/tou.html

Chemical Method ▲ ▼	Principle ▲ ▼	Advantages ▲ ▼	Disadvantages ▲ ▼	Examples ▲ ▼
Cationic polymer	Negatively charged nucleotide backbones form complexes with cationic polymers, which are then taken up by cells via endocytosis	Cost-effective No viral vector required Can be applied to a variety of cell types	Very low transfection efficiency (< 10%) Highly cytotoxic to some cell types (e.g. sensitive cells and generation of stable cell lines) Can only be used for transient transfection	Diethylaminoethyl (DEAE)-dextran polybrene polyethyleneimine (PEI) dendrimers
Calcium phosphate co-precipitate	Nucleotides, calcium and phosphate buffer are combined to form a precipitate that is taken up by cells via endocytosis.	Cost-effective Can be used for transient and stable transfection Neurons tolerate transfection well with little cytotoxicity	Low transfection efficiency Transfection strongly dependent upon experimental conditions (e.g., cell constitution, pH, quality and amount of used nucleotides) Cytotoxic to most sensitive primary cell lines	Calcium phosphate
Cationic lipid	Negatively charged nucleotides form complexes with cationic lipids, which then pass through the cell membrane and release the nucleotides into they cytoplasm via endocytosis	Easy-to-use, minimal steps required High transfection efficiency Works with a wide variety of eukaryotic cells Effective on dissociated cells and slices No package size limit	Difficult to target specific cells Not applicable to all cell types Low transfection efficiency in most primary cells	Transfectamine™ 5000 Transfectamine™ mRNA Transfectamine™ 6000 CRISPR Transfectamine™ 7000 siRNA Lipofectamine

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MLA	"Quest Database™ Overview of chemical transfection methods." AAT Bioquest, Inc., 24 Apr. 2025, https://www.aatbio.com/data-sets/overview-of-chemical-transfection-methods.
APA	AAT Bioquest, Inc. (2025, April 24). Quest Database™ Overview of chemical transfection methods. AAT Bioquest. https://www.aatbio.com/data-sets/overview-of-chemical-transfection-methods.
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Overview of chemical transfection methods

References

This online tool may be cited as follows

MLA

APA