Cleavage of supercoiled plasmid DNA by autoantibody Fab fragment: application of the flow linear dichroism technique.

A highly effective method consisting of two affinity chromatography steps and ion-exchange and gel-filtration chromatography steps was developed for purification of autoantibodies from human sera with DNA-hydrolyzing activity. Antibody Fab fragment, which had been purified 130-fold, was shown to catalyze plasmid DNA cleavage. The flow linear dichroism technique was used for quantitative and qualitative studying of supercoiled plasmid DNA cleavage by these autoantibodies in comparison with DNase I and EcoRI restriction endonuclease. The DNA autoantibody Fab fragment was shown to hydrolyze plasmid DNA by Mg(2+)-dependent single-strand multiple nicking of the substrate. Kinetic properties of the DNA autoantibody Fab fragment were evaluated from the flow linear dichroism and agarose gel electrophoresis data and revealed a high affinity (Kobsm = 43 nM) and considerable catalytic efficiency (kappcat/Kobsm = 0.32 min-1.nM-1) of the reaction.