samm said:

Just wondering about the different sources for specific human and other species cDNA constructs. I know that companies such as Invitrogen and OpenBioSystems have some of them, but was wondering if there any good (and perhaps more affordable!) sources anyone knows of. The ideal situation of course would be having the constructs in a mammalian expression or shuttle vector. Any thoughts?

The trade-off is between expense and quality of product. Basically all of the companies distribute the same cDNA clones from the EST collection, but they are shipped in a sequencing vector. I have found OpenBioSystems to be a very good source, much better customer service than some others. These days it isn't too difficult to PCR clone the insert into whatever plasmid you want (although here size matters!).

If you want the ORF ready-to-go in an expression or shuttle vector you will pay a premium for having someone else do the cloning and verification. If there were an inexpensive source of ORFs already cloned into shuttle vectors, the companies couldn't charge an arm & leg for the final product!