New England Biolabs, Inc. (NEB),  the industry leader in the discovery and production of enzymes for molecular biology applications, has released the Gibson Assembly Cloning Kit and online, for the cloning of DNA fragments using the Gibson Assembly approach. This kit includes NEB's robust Gibson Assembly Master Mix and NEB 5-alpha competent E. coli for fragment assembly and transformation in less than two hours.

Gibson Assembly enables the rapid assembly of multiple DNA fragments using a one-step, isothermal reaction. Developed by Dr Daniel Gibson and his colleagues at the J Craig Venter Institute (JCVI), as part of a programme sponsored by Synthetic Genomics, Inc. (SGI), Gibson Assembly has become a mainstay in the laboratories of many synthetic biologists and is now catching on in the wider life science community, due to its ease-of-use, robustness and flexibility. The Gibson Assembly Cloning Kit builds upon this by combining the power of the Gibson Assembly Master Mix, which was first commercialized by NEB in February 2012, with NEB 5-alpha competent E. coli, enabling fragment assembly and cloning in less than two hours.

"As a leader in the discovery and development of cloning tools and technologies, NEB has embraced Gibson Assembly and further developed its protocol for cloning", states Dr. Bill Jack, Director of Research at NEB. "While traditional cloning methods remain important standard practices in the laboratory, this alternative method delivers additional speed, flexibility and ease-of-use."

"SGI is pleased to expand the portfolio of products commercialized with NEB and to further enable scientific progress in the fields of synthetic biology and DNA cloning" states Fernanda Gandara, SVP, at SGI.

The Gibson Assembly Cloning Kit includes protocols for primer design, and has been optimized for the assembly of 1 or more DNA fragments into a linearized vector. Alongside this new kit, NEB has also developed NEBuilder, an online primer design tool, specifically for use in Gibson Assembly.