Research Progress in the Application of Enzyme Disinfectants

Disinfection methods are divided into physical methods, chemical methods and biological methods. The use of biological enzymes as disinfectants should be one of the biological disinfection methods. Biological disinfection is the use of animals, plants, microorganisms and (or) their metabolites to eliminate or kill pathogenic microorganisms in the environment, so as to achieve the purpose of controlling the spread of diseases. Biological disinfectants refer to biological products with in vitro bactericidal effects. According to the nature and source of biological disinfectants, they are currently mainly divided into:

① Plant-derived disinfectants: The antibacterial active ingredients in higher plants are mainly essential oils. Essential oils are compounds of esters, aldehydes, ketones and terpenes. Terpenes, alkaloids, flavonoids, steroids, organic acids, proteins, etc. also have antibacterial effects.

②Antibacterial peptide: A small molecule polypeptide with antibacterial activity induced by organisms. At present, there are more than 1,000 antibacterial peptides isolated from organisms. With the increasing maturity of peptide chemical synthesis technology, many artificially synthesized antimicrobial peptides have entered clinical research in the world.

③Bacteriophage: Bacteriophage can specifically infect a certain kind of bacteria, penetrate into bacterial cells and replicate itself, and at the same time produce lyase, highly specific and rapid lysing bacterial cell walls, killing bacteria and releasing new viruses.

④ Biological enzymes: Biological enzymes are widely present in higher animals, protozoa, insects, plants and various microorganisms. It is a highly efficient, highly specific and bio-enzyme biocatalyst. With the rapid development of modern life science and biotechnology, the compounding of different enzyme disinfectants and combining them into a composite biological enzyme disinfectant can overcome the shortcomings of a single disinfection spectrum of enzyme disinfectants. Enzyme disinfectants have attracted more and more attention because of their high efficiency, safety and theoretically reusable advantages.

Main types of enzyme disinfectants

1.1 Chitinase

Chitinase is a linear polysaccharide composed of N-acetylglucosamine connected by β-1,4 bonds, and is the structural substance of most bacterial cell walls. Chitinase produced by infected plants can destroy chitin in bacterial cell walls. At present, the research on chitinase at home and abroad is mainly for its antibacterial mechanism, and there is no relevant application research.

1.2 Peroxidase

The peroxidases known to have good bactericidal effects on pathogenic microorganisms include haloperoxidase, lactoperoxidase (LPO) and glucose oxidase. At present, the research on peroxidase at home and abroad is still in the experimental stage, and there is no product application.

1.3 Ribozyme

Ribozymes (RNA enzymes) is a piece of RNA with enzymatic activity, with high specificity and non-toxic characteristics, and it is one of the hotspots of antiviral research in recent years. The antiviral effects of ribozymes are currently mostly in the experimental research stage, and some scientists have applied ribozymes to the research of anti-HIV infection. The antiviral treatment of ribozymes has shown hope, but there is no research on the application of ribozymes as disinfectants at home and abroad.

1.4 Phage Lyase

Bacteriphage lysins are a type of protein encoded by bacteriophages that are synthesized at the late stage of genome replication. They can hydrolyze the peptidoglycan of the bacterial cell wall to kill the bacteria. Studies have shown that phage lyase has a good bactericidal effect on pathogenic bacteria such as Streptococcus pneumoniae, Bacillus anthracis, Lactobacillus, Staphylococcus aureus and so on. Bacteriphage lysins is still in the stage of laboratory research and clinical trials.

1.5 Lysozyme

Lysozyme, also known as muramidase or N-acetylmuramidegycanohydrlase, is an alkaline enzyme that can hydrolyze mucopolysaccharides in pathogenic bacteria. It is widely found in various tissues of the human body, egg whites of birds and poultry, tears of mammals, saliva, plasma, milk and other body fluids, among which egg whites are the most abundant.