I have got competent cell DH5 alpha from a company. Can I grow them for more and use for transfection work in future? If possible then how to grow and extract the cells from growing media and store?
In general if you grow the cells, they will loose their competet status. But when you perform next time a transfection, you can plate a minimal amount of the cell untransformed on/in LB-media and then you can stock them (Glycerol stock in -80°C freezer) and reinduce competence using for example clacium chlirde compence induction (for heat shock transformation). There are a lot of protocols available, you have to see how you transform your E. coli and which protcol works best. But mostly you will not get the performance (cfu) like the comercially ones.
Best,
Guido
Sure you can keep the cells and use them to produce your own competent cells. If you don't need a very high transformation efficiency they should work fine.
Here some sample protocols for chemically competent cells (using CaCl2): http://mcb.berkeley.edu/labs/krantz/protocols/calcium_comp_cells.pdf
and for electrocompetent cells: http://mcb.berkeley.edu/labs/krantz/protocols/electrocomp_cells.pdf
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