Addgene is a global, nonprofit repository that was created to help scientists share plasmids. When scientists publish research papers, they deposit their associated plasmids at Addgene. Then, when other scientists read the publication, they have easy access to the plasmids needed to conduct future experiments. Before Addgene, scientists were tasked with repeatedly shipping plasmids to each new requesting scientist. Now, scientists ship their plasmids to Addgene once, and we take care of the quality control, MTA compliance, shipping, and record-keeping.