Although DNA immunization remains a very attractive method to induce immunity to a variety of pathogens, the transfection efficiency is still relatively low. This is especially true in species other than mice. One way of improving this efficiency is to temporarily permeabilize the cells to allow cellular uptake of DNA plasmids. One way to permeabilize cells is by electroporation. The current report describes some of the parameters for optimizing electroporation for enhancing the level of gene expression. A clear concern is balancing the plasmid uptake with cellular or tissue damage. Techniques are described to achieve this goal.