The ability of norfloxacin, amifloxacin, cinoxacin, ciprofloxacin, flumequine, nalidixic acid, ofloxacin (OFL), oxolinic acid, perfloxacin, pipemidic acid, and rosoxacin to inhibit the in vitro supercoiling activity of Micrococcus luteus DNA gyrase was compared with the ability of each drug to inhibit the growth of the M. luteus strain from which the gyrase was purified. The potency of the quinolones as DNA gyrase inhibitors did not always correlate with antimicrobial potency. For example, OFL was a less potent inhibitor of gyrase than rosoxacin, yet the MIC of OFL was 16-fold lower than that of rosoxacin. Similarly, the MICs of norfloxacin and ciprofloxacin (the most potent of the antibiotics tested in these assays) were several hundredfold lower than the MIC of nalidixic acid (the least potent of these antibiotics), but the inhibition of purified gyrase by these two quinolones was only 8- to 16-fold lower than that of nalidixic acid. These results suggest that factors in addition to inhibition of gyrase supercoiling activity are important in determining the potency of these drugs. Further studies indicated that the uptake of norfloxacin, OFL, and amifloxacin by M. luteus cells may not account for the large differences in MICs observed for these drugs (MICs of 0.8, 2.0, and 128 micrograms/ml, respectively).