2016/05/25 by Helen Miller, Miller, Helen, Adam J. M. Wollman +3 · 1 citation
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · Engineering · #Advanced biosensing and bioanalysis techniques #Biomolecules (q-bio.BM) #Cancer therapeutics and mechanisms #FOS: Biological sciences #Photonic and Optical Devices
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1605.07789
openalex publication_date 2016/05/25 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Antibiotics such as the quinolones and fluoroquinolones kill bacterial pathogens ultimately through DNA damage. They target the essential type IIA topoisomerases in bacteria by stabilising the normally transient double strand break state which is created to modify the supercoiling state of the DNA. Here we discuss the development of these antibiotics and their method of action. Existing methods for DNA damage visualisation, such as the comet assay and immunofluorescence imaging can often only be analysed qualitatively and this analysis is subjective. We describe a putative single-molecule fluorescence technique for quantifying DNA damage via the total fluorescence intensity of a DNA origami tile fully saturated with an intercalating dye, along with the optical requirements for how to implement these into a light microscopy imaging system capable of single-molecule millisecond timescale imaging. This system promises significant improvements in reproducibility of the quantification of DNA damage over traditional techniques.