Strand cleavage assays were performed as described in the Experimental Section. Briefly, supercoiled double-stranded plasmid DNA (pGL2-Basic, 1 μL of a 1 mg/mL solution in 10 mM Tris-HCl, 1 mM EDTA, pH 7.5) was added to water (17 μL), followed by addition of sodium sulfide nonahydrate (2 μL in sodium phosphate, pH 7, 500 mM). Form I and II plasmid DNA were resolved on an agarose gel and stained with ethidium bromide. The DNA was visualized by UV-transillumination and the amounts measured by digital image analysis. The number of single strand breaks per plasmid DNA molecule (S) was calculated using the equation S = −ln f1 where f1 is the fraction of plasmid present as form I.97