Cat. No.	Volume
Carbenicillin	P21-020	1 g
	P25-020	5 g
	P31-020	10 g

Carbenicillin (or alpha-carboxybenzylpenicillin) is a semi-synthetic antibiotic used for gene expression research utilizing carbenicillin-resistant plasmids. The antibiotic is non-toxic to plant cells and is therefore used for the elimination of Agrobacterium species after transformation. Furthermore carbenicillin is high­ly active against gram negative bacteria. It prevents bacterial cell wall synthesis by binding and inactivating transpeptidases which are needed for the crosslinking of peptidoglycan.

Carbenicillin is recommended for use instead of ampi­cillin to maintain the selective marker bla which is coding for a β-lactamase. Ampicillin selection tends to be lost in cultures as the drug is degraded. Carbenicillin is less sensitive to low pH and so the loss of drug resistance can be avoided. Furthermore car­benicillin is found to be less sensitive to the activity ofβ-lactamase then ampicillin. The use of carbenicillin instead of ampicillin helps prevent the overgrowth of satellite colonies.

Agrobacterium is used to transform dicot plants (e.g. Nicotiana tabacum) with the Ti-plamid system. Successfully transformed plant cells are selected by the antibiotic kanamycin. Using carbenicillin the Agrobacteria are removed after transformation.

Formula: C₁₇H₁₆N₂O₆S x 2Na

Molecular Weight: 422.4 g/mol

The working concentration for plant transformation with Agrobacterium is between 50 and 300 µg/ml (for E. coli: 50 - 100 µg/ml).