Concept of Magneto-Sites

Gyrase is the key enzyme in manufacturing supercoiled plasmid for DNA vaccines. However overexpression of gyrase inside a cell is not a complete solution for improving the level of supercoiling. Our Magneto Site project studied several naturally occurring gyrase binding sites which are known to be preferred by gyrase in binding to DNA molecules. So the overall aim was to characterise one of this GBS and add it to our plasmid of interest, so that we can add a level of specificity to our gyrase enzymes. In this way we can focus our overexpressed gyrase enzymes towards our target plasmid, while diverting them away from Escherichia coli genome and not interfering with its growth. Furthermore it is hypothesised the increase binding efficiency of the gyrase would also improve the quality of supercoiling by producing plasmids with higher supercoiling density.