# Sucrose Treatment Enhances the Electrotransfer of DNA by Activating Phospholipase A2

## TL;DR

This study shows that sucrose improves DNA delivery into cells by activating a specific enzyme, phospholipase A2, which enhances vesicle fusion.

## Contribution

The paper identifies phospholipase A2 as a key molecular target for improving electrotransfer efficiency through sucrose treatment.

## Key findings

- Sucrose treatment upregulates phospholipase A2 and V-ATPase gene families.
- Phospholipase A2 inhibition reverses the ET improvement caused by sucrose.
- V-ATPase inhibition had minimal or enhancing effects on ET efficiency.

## Abstract

Our previous study discovered that sucrose and other non-reducing sugars (e.g., trehalose and raffinose) could be used to improve the electrotransfer (ET) of molecular cargo, including DNA, mRNA, and ribonucleoprotein in various cell lines and primary human cells in vitro and in vivo. To understand the molecular mechanisms of this improvement, we used RNA sequencing technology to analyze changes in the cell transcriptome after sucrose treatment. The results from our analysis demonstrated that the sucrose treatment upregulated phospholipase A2 and V-ATPase gene families, which could potentially influence the acidity of intracellular vesicles through augmenting vesicle fusion and the influx of proton, respectively. To determine how this upregulation affects ET efficiency, we treated cells with pharmaceutical inhibitors of phospholipase A2 and V-ATPase. The data demonstrated that the treatment with the phospholipase A2 inhibitor could reverse the ET improvement elicited by the sucrose treatment. The V-ATPase inhibitor treatment either had little influence or further enhanced the effect of the sucrose treatment on the ET efficiency. These observations provide a molecular explanation for our previous findings, demonstrating that the sucrose treatment primarily enhanced the ET efficiency by promoting vesicle trafficking and fusion through the activation of phospholipase A2.