Novel fluorescence-based high-throughput method uncovers single-cell DNA supercoiling heterogeneity

DNA supercoiling is essential for life because it controls critical processes, including transcription, replication and recombination. Current methods to measure DNA supercoiling in vivo are laborious and unable to examine single cells. Here we report a method for high-throughput measurement of bacterial DNA supercoiling in vivo. Fluorescent Evaluation of DNA Supercoiling (FEDS) utilizes a plasmid harboring the gene for a green fluorescent protein transcribed by a discovered promoter that responds exclusively to DNA supercoiling, and the gene for a red fluorescent protein transcribed by a constitutive promoter as internal standard. Using FEDS, we uncovered single cell heterogeneity in DNA supercoiling and established that, surprisingly, population-level decreases in DNA supercoiling result from a low mean/high variance DNA supercoiling subpopulation, rather than a homogeneous shift in supercoiling of the whole population. In addition, we identified a regulatory loop in which a gene that decreases DNA supercoiling is transcriptionally repressed when DNA supercoiling increases. Overall design: Comparison of gene expression of different strains of S. Typhimurium in various media, in order to produce a range of DNA supercoiling