Not "necessary", but ideal. It's always good to stick to the manufacturer's protocol. You could mimic such a medium, i.e. make an DMEM with reduced FBS or none, but avoid antibiotics. Optimem is recommended, i also used it and it is cheap and worth the price.

https://tools.thermofisher.com/content/sfs/manuals/lipofectamine3000_protocol.pdf?icid=cvc-lipofectamine-c2m2

Not really, but it does tend to work better. If you want to save money by not using OptiMEM, you could try PEI instead of Lipofectamine (works well in mammalian cells, not sure about your application!)

Hi Jill I want to do transfection in shrimp sperm using several transfectants such as lipofectamine 3000, PEI, and JetPEI. But I do not have Opti-MEM. Do you know something that can be replaced?

- sperm is not a cell line

Thank you.

Hi Can Thank you very much for your advice. But I have read that optimem is used for cell lines, however, I have doubts because I am working with shrimp sperm that is not a cell line. I would appreciate your recommendation

regards

OK I have never tested this experimentally, but Optimem is very similar to DMEM but with no serum (or reduced serum), HEPES for buffering and sodium bicarb. So if you have DMEM with no serum, add HEPES for buffering and it will be similar.

Optimem isn't that expensive though, you might be better off just buying it