Plasmids of pcDNA 3.1 with target gene should have been a circular dsDNA already. The question I got should be: whether the target gene can also be expressed by tranduction with lentivirus/adenovirus, etc. The answer is YES !

But what you could need to think about, maybe:

* The capacity: lentivirus ~15,000bp, adenovirus, ~30,000bp.

* Engineering availability: Largely tow methods, recombination or enzymatic ligation. Normally, short fragments could be easily mounted by recombination, and ligation methods more accurately, but, in all, depending on the fragment you want.

Also, you final aim is high expression, you may also need to pay attention to the promoter arrangement. When you clone gene into lentivirus, you HAVE TO assign the promoters, one for lentivirus packaging, one for gene expression. Which is not the case to care for pcDNA 3.1. The low expression by pcDNA3.1 could also be affected by low transduction rate. We have tested with flow cytometry. A largely maximum 20-30% of transduction for HEK 293T (possibly the cell line with highest transduction rate) can be obtained.

In all, you may need to comprehensively deal with the issue.

Good luck.

Thank you Shaoshi.!