Chemically competent E. coli cells suitable for subcloning efficiency transformations, such as plasmid transformation or routine subcloning (e.g,. inserting a 1 kb fragment into a 2 kb vector). The efficiency of these cells is not sufficiently high for most other cloning applications. For that, we recommend NEB® 5-alpha Competent E. coli (High Efficiency) (NEB #C2987) which has 1,000-fold higher transformation efficiency.