The half-life of a plasmid in cells in culture is fairly brief, but a lot of that is presumably because of dilution due to cell division. What happens when a plasmid has achieved entry into the nucleus of a quiescent cell (which could include somatic postmitotic cells, metabolically active serum-starved cells, growth-arrested cells, etc)? It will be degraded over time; what does the decay curve look like, assessed either directly or indirectly as protein expression?
Rate of disappearance of a plasmid from cell nucleus seems to depend on both, the nature of plasmid as well as the cell.
In case of protein expression, in addition the the availability of the plasmid, there are additional caveats - half-life of the gene product and silencing of the gene expression (promoter type and other sequences).
There is no one shoe fits all answer. You will benefit from reading a few recent good review articles to appreciate the complexity of gene expression through gene delivery.
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