Morgan, I. L. | bioRxiv Science

bioRxiv2025

Bacterial type II topoisomerases cleave DNA in a species-specific manner

The type II topoisomerases, gyrase and topoisomerase IV, are essential enzymes in nearly all bacteria and are the targets of fluoroquinolones, which are some of the most widely prescribed broad-spectrum antibacterials in clinical use. As part of their catalytic cycle, gyrase and topoisomerase IV transiently cleave DNA in a sequence-dependent manner. However, it is unclear whether this sequence-dependence is species-specific. Therefore, using our recently developed SHAN-seq method, we mapped and compared cleavage sites for type II topoisomerases from three different pathogenic bacterial species, Escherichia coli, Bacillus anthracis, and Mycobacterium tuberculosis in the presence of the fluoroquinolone, ciprofloxacin. We found that the enzymes have substantially different DNA cleavage specificities that vary between gyrase and topoisomerase IV, across species, with supercoil chirality, and in response to ciprofloxacin. Our results demonstrate that bacterial species fine-tune the DNA cleavage specificity of their type II topoisomerases. This finding suggests that cleavage specificity may play important physiological roles and, in turn, may affect the susceptibility of bacteria to fluoroquinolone antibacterials.

biochemistry↗

bioRxiv2024

Highly sensitive mapping of in vitro type II topoisomerase DNA cleavage sites with SHAN-seq

Type II topoisomerases (topos) are a ubiquitous and essential class of enzymes that form transient enzyme-bound double-stranded breaks on DNA called cleavage complexes. The location and frequency of these cleavage complexes on DNA is important for cellular function, genomic stability, and a number of clinically important anticancer and antibacterial drugs, e.g., quinolones. We developed a simple high-accuracy end-sequencing (SHAN-seq) method to sensitively map type II topo cleavage complexes on DNA in vitro. Using SHAN-seq, we detected Escherichia coli gyrase and topoisomerase IV cleavage complexes at hundreds of sites on supercoiled pBR322 DNA, approximately one site every ten bp, with frequencies that varied by two-to-three orders of magnitude. These sites included previously identified sites and 20-50 fold more new sites. We show that the location and frequency of cleavage complexes at these sites are enzyme-specific and vary substantially in the presence of the quinolone, ciprofloxacin, but not with DNA supercoil chirality, i.e., negative vs. positive supercoiling. SHAN-seqs exquisite sensitivity provides an unprecedented single-nucleotide resolution view of the distribution of gyrase and topoisomerase IV cleavage complexes on DNA. Moreover, the discovery that these enzymes can cleave DNA at orders of magnitude more sites than the relatively few previously known sites resolves the apparent paradox of how these enzymes resolve topological problems throughout the genome.

biochemistry↗