Record source, passage, and license before the next share

An implementation checklist for documenting plasmid provenance is a share gate, not a prettier freezer map. Stop the handoff if a second person cannot restate where the tube came from, which host and restreak it is on, and which license still binds it. Buying a box or creating a shared folder does not finish the job.

What Provenance Must Exist Before the Next Share

The outcome is a written record that ties one current tube to three objects: source, passage, and license. Inputs are the parental stock, the tube you are about to give away, and any material-transfer or label-license paper that arrived with the plasmid. Addgene treats a request as incomplete until a material transfer agreement exists. That is a repository process fact, not a requirement that every internal share go through Addgene. It is evidence that a transfer has a legal object, not only a nickname on tape.

This page does not rebuild the handoff field-group catalog or the physical-stock-to-sequence object model. Those pages own field lists. This checklist owns the three objects that must exist before anyone leaves with a tube.

Steps: Record Source, Passage, and License

1. Write the source. Name the provider or internal parent, the catalog or deposit ID if one exists, the date the lab received it, and the physical form that arrived (stab, glycerol, or DNA). Checkpoint: a second person can point at the parent without asking who “got it from a friend.”
2. Write the passage. Name the current host strain, the parental stock ID, and whether this tube is a first restreak from that parent or a later overnight. Addgene’s streak-plate protocol isolates a single colony from the stab or glycerol stock before a prep so the purified DNA is less likely to be a mixture. Use that practice as the passage rule: record the restreak, do not invent a clean history by renaming the culture. Checkpoint: the generation string resolves to a real parental tube.
3. Write the license. Name the MTA, the implementing letter, or the written “internal-only” note, and list any limited-use label that sits on top of it. Addgene’s third-party license page states that many plasmids carry technologies the recipient must acknowledge in addition to the MTA. A catalog number is not that acknowledgement. Checkpoint: commercial or fee-for-service use is either marked out of scope or tied to a separate license that actually exists.
4. Bind the current tube ID to those three objects. The label on the vial may stay short. The record must still resolve source, passage, and license from that ID. Checkpoint: if the tube ID is searched, the three objects appear without opening someone’s inbox.

Worked check. A collaborator asks for “the Cas9 backbone we used last spring.” The parental catalog is written. The tube in the door freezer is a fourth overnight in DH5α with no restreak note. The fluorescent-protein insert carries a limited-use label that nobody copied. The share stops at step 2 and step 3. Restreak from the parental stock, rewrite the generation, and paste the label-license sentence before anyone packs a box.

Expected Result and Verification

Expected result: a second person opens the record and restates source, passage, and license without asking the sender. Verification: the current tube ID resolves to those three objects, and the parental stock still exists or is marked retired with a pointer to its replacement. A purchased freezer box, a new shared drive, or a renamed zip of map files fails the test. Those are storage moves. They do not create provenance.

Failures That Still Look Like a Labeled Tube

Unknown passage. The tube has a nickname and a date, but not a host or a restreak count. Rollback: hold the share, streak a single colony from the parental stab or glycerol stock, start a new overnight from that colony, and write the generation as a restreak from the parent. Do not reset passage by crossing out the old number on the same culture.

Missing license. The catalog page is bookmarked and the MTA was “probably signed last year.” Rollback: hold the share until the agreement or the limited-use sentence is in the record. Do not infer permission from a public catalog entry. If the intended use is commercial or a fee-for-service, stop until a license that covers that use is named. Addgene’s request path is one example of that hold, not a universal vendor.

Orphan tube ID. The vial is labeled, the three objects live in a chat thread. Rollback: copy the objects onto the record that the tube ID already points to. Creating a second folder titled “final_share” is not rollback.

This Checklist Is Not a Database Entry Gate

Filling every intake field in a shared plasmid database is a later job. Checking that an imported feature’s coordinates match the sequence is a later job. Moving a map from one design file format to another is a later job. Those pages will exist beside this one. After source, passage, and license are written, a map or notebook such as ZettaGene or ZettaNote is one place to store the three objects. Official copy documents sequence visualization, ORF and restriction-site annotation, and structured experiment records. It does not invent a license and it does not replace the share gate. The takeaway is the hold, not a new box.

Frequently Asked Questions

What three fields must be written before a plasmid is shared?

Source, passage, and license. If a second person cannot restate those three from the record, the share is early.

Does a catalog number replace a license note?

No. A catalog number names a source handle. The MTA and any limited-use label still have to be written. Commercial use is often out of scope until a separate license exists.