bioRxiv preprint doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/356659; this version posted June 27, 2018. The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not certified by peer review) is the author/funder. This article is a US Government work. It is not subject to copyright under 17 USC 105 and is also made available for use under a CC0 license. Direct Observation of Topoisomerase IA Gate Dynamics Maria Mills1, Yuk-Ching Tse-Dinh2,3, & Keir C. Neuman1* 1 Laboratory of Single Molecule Biophysics, National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland 20892, USA 2 Biomolecular Sciences Institute, Florida International University, Miami, Florida 33199, USA 3 Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Florida International University, Miami, Florida 33199, USA * Corresponding author. Email:
[email protected] 1 bioRxiv preprint doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/356659; this version posted June 27, 2018. The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not certified by peer review) is the author/funder. This article is a US Government work. It is not subject to copyright under 17 USC 105 and is also made available for use under a CC0 license. Abstract Type IA topoisomerases cleave single-stranded DNA and relieve negative supercoils in discrete steps corresponding to the passage of the intact DNA strand through the cleaved strand. Although it is assumed type IA topoisomerases accomplish this strand passage via a protein-mediated DNA gate, opening of this gate has never been observed. We developed a single-molecule assay to directly measure gate opening of the E. coli type IA topoisomerases I and III.