Inactivation of gram-positive bacteria using lytic enzyme mixture

The mass of air breathed by a human per day is equivalent to 10 times the mass of food consumed in that time. However, fundamental safety measures for atmospheric bacterial control have not yet been implemented. The purpose of our research is to prevent wound infections via a cell wall lytic enzyme, which can inactivate bacteria in air that cause infectious diseases by decomposing their cell envelopes. On the basis of the structure of the cell walls of bacteria, we proposed the use of a lytic enzyme mixture including glycosidase, protease and lipase. In this study, the use of a lytic enzyme mixture derived from Pseudomonas sp. and Rhizopus niveus was examined, the performance of the lytic enzyme mixture was evaluated using lysozyme, a typical lytic enzyme, as a control. The substrate used was Micrococcus luteus, a gram-positive bacterium. The experimental results showed that the use of the lytic enzyme mixture exhibited a lytic rate per hour that was 13-39% greater than that of the control. Furthermore, although there are different phases during bacterial multiplication, the lytic rate per hour improved for all phases when the lytic enzyme mixture was used.