Tissue distribution of a plasmid DNA containing epitopes of foot-and-mouth disease virus in mice

It is known that only the minority of plasmid DNAs effect a cure or prevention after intramuscular injection into host. But what is the fate of the majority? And indeed how many of the injected DNAs work? Till now, little is known about it. To answer these questions, two methods including PCR and autoradiography were used in distribution study in mice that had received a single muscular inoculation of plasmid DNA containing antigenic epitopes of foot-and-mouth disease virus. The results showed that the plasmid DNAs were distributed by blood circulation and degraded soon. The degradation ratio of super coiled plasmid DNA was 20.9% in 10 min, 34.1% in 1 h, 86.8% in 1 day and 97.8% in 1 week in sera in vivo. And over a half of the whole were output in urine and faeces. The rest resided most in muscles as ‘antigen pool’, next in immune organs, kidney, liver, heart, lung and little in brain or gonad. About 40% or 0.5% of total plasmid DNAs, inferring to be effective, resided in muscles or immune organs, respectively. Collective results suggested that ‘nude’ DNA, as water injection, was characterized as quick absorbent, extensive distribution, but low utilization rate. Finally, the immune mechanism for the DNA vaccine was discussed.