Vector Library — Browse Annotated Plasmid Vectors and Their Parts
308 publicly deposited vectors with their full GenBank feature tables, and 617 parts harvested from them.
🌐 Nothing you paste is logged or stored — every tool is also callable via REST & MCP, and in bulk from the batch tools
Every vector here is a named GenBank accession, not a catalogue listing: the sequence, the topology and the feature table are the record's own, and each entry shows the accession and version so you can check it. The parts library is derived from the same records — a promoter or a resistance marker is the exact span some depositor annotated, and each one keeps the accession and coordinates it came from. That also fixes the boundary: a vector with no public record cannot be here, and the library says which ones it looked for and could not find.
Why a vector you use every day may not be in here
Every sequence in this library is a copy of a public GenBank or RefSeq record, which is what makes it redistributable. Vectors that exist only as an Addgene deposit are not here and cannot be, because Addgene gates its downloads behind an account login. That excludes a lot of everyday plasmids — pET-28a(+), pGEX-4T-1, pcDNA3.1, lentiCRISPRv2, pLKO.1 — and nothing here is taken from a vendor catalogue or from SnapGene.
So a name missing from this list is a fact about GenBank, not about the plasmid. If you have an accession for the one you want, fetch that record directly instead: the Fetch button in the SeqStudio workbench (and the sequence_fetch API tool) will pull any NCBI, UniProt or Ensembl record into a document.
Working on a whole construct rather than one library record? Open SeqStudio — the full editor, with live feature annotation, plasmid maps, restriction and primer panels, undo/redo, multi-document tabs and GenBank / SnapGene import and export.
How to use the Vector library tool
- 1Search by name (pBR322, pCAMBIA-1301, pGL4.74) or filter by category, size range, or an annotated feature like 'T7 promoter' or 'ori'.
- 2Open a vector to see its accession and version, length, topology, and every annotated feature with 1-based coordinates and strand.
- 3Copy the sequence into the workbench, or send it straight to a digest, primer design or Golden Gate plan.
- 4Switch to the parts tab to search promoters, terminators, tags, markers, origins and polyA signals, each with the accession and span it was harvested from.
Frequently asked questions
Where do these sequences come from?
Every one is fetched from a named NCBI GenBank accession and checked before it ships: the parsed sequence length has to match the record's own LOCUS line, the bases have to be unambiguous, and every feature has to fall inside the molecule. The manifest records the accession, its version and the date it was fetched, so you can pull the same record yourself and compare.
Why isn't pET-28a(+) / pcDNA3.1 / pLKO.1 in here?
Because there is no GenBank record for them under those names. Most vendor and Addgene-only vectors are distributed through catalogues rather than deposited, and this library will not scrape Addgene, SnapGene or a vendor site to fill the gap. The library ships the list of every vector it looked for and could not find, with the reason for each — and if you have an accession, the Sequence Fetcher will pull it directly.
Some famous vectors have almost no annotation. Why?
That is the record, not the library. The original depositions for several classics — pUC19's L09137, pRS316's U03442, M13mp18's X02513 — carry only a source feature covering the whole plasmid. Where a later independent submission of the same vector carries a real feature table, that is the record used, and the accession shown will say so. Where none does, the vector is left out rather than shipped as a blank circle.
How is the parts library built?
By harvesting the annotated features of the same vectors, never by typing sequences in. A part is a promoter, terminator, RBS, polyA signal, origin, marker, tag, reporter or linker that some record annotated at exact coordinates; parts are deduplicated on name and sequence together, so the same name legitimately appears more than once when two records annotate different spans for it. Features with a spliced or approximate location are dropped, because their sequence is not fully determined.
Does an annotated promoter mean it works?
No. Every label here is the depositor's annotation, and this library holds no expression data at all. It tells you what a public record says a span is, with the accession to check it against — not how strongly it will drive transcription in your strain.
Is this the same plasmid as the one in my freezer?
Not necessarily. A vector that has passed through a few labs under the same name will have picked up differences from the deposited record. If that matters, sequence yours and compare it with the Construct Verifier or the plasmid-identity screen.
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