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Kinetics of microbial death by combined treatment with heat and antimicrobial agents
Author(s) -
Tsuchido T.,
Shibasaki I.
Publication year - 1980
Publication title -
biotechnology and bioengineering
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.136
H-Index - 189
eISSN - 1097-0290
pISSN - 0006-3592
DOI - 10.1002/bit.260220109
Subject(s) - sorbic acid , chemistry , arrhenius plot , pulmonary surfactant , reaction rate constant , antimicrobial , arrhenius equation , enthalpy , kinetics , organic chemistry , activation energy , thermodynamics , biochemistry , physics , quantum mechanics
Studies were made of the death kinetics of Escherichia coli cells heated at 46 to 56°C in 0.05 M phosphate buffer (pH 7.0) containing either an amphoteric surfactant (Tego 15DL, 1–10 μg/ml) or sorbic acid (0.5 to 3%). A linear relationship was obtained on the Arrhenius plot for the death of cells heated with each antimicrobial agent. The kinetics of the action of the surfactant, however, differed from that of sorbic acid. With the amphoteric surfactant, the activation enthalpy of the death reaction decreased from 108 to 51 kcal/mol as the concentration of surfactant was increased in the range tested although the death rate remained high; whereas with sorbic acid the activation enthalpy remained fairly constant (104 ± 9 kcal/mol) independent of its concentration and the death rate was similarly high. Further, in the action of the amphoteric surfactant, a thermodynamic compensation effect was observed, the compensation temperature being 334°K (61°C), i.e., relatively close to the observed temperatures. For sorbic acid, however, this temperature seemed to be too high to observe when determined from the Arrhenius plot. The data of the dependency of the death‐rate constant upon the concentration of antimicrobial agent indicated a similar difference in the action of the two agents. Based on our results and on data obtained by other workers, we propose that antimicrobial agents that enhance cellular death induced by heating can be characterized into two types.