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Probably a very ignorant question, but don't protease enzymes break proteins down to the amino acids? Suppose my lab bench is infected with prions or flat prote
by greenwich26 6y ago
Probably a very ignorant question, but don't protease enzymes break proteins down to the amino acids? Suppose my lab bench is infected with prions or flat protein sheets or something. If I spray it over with a bunch of protease, would I be able to "disinfect" it?
- dnautics 6y agoGreat question. I'm going to answer in three stages. 1. Theoretically speaking, yes. And there's probably a biological protease that does it in the the body. Last I checked, it's still unidentified; my money is on Insulin-Degrading Enzyme. 2. It's more complicated than that. If you just buy an off the shelf protease, it probably won't work, because those are used to cutting up floppy bits of peptide sticking out of a protein, so to get there you would need to pull the sheet apart ribbon by ribbon first to be effective. 3. Given enough time, though, the ribbons ARE in equilibrium between being on/off of the ends of the sheet, so a protease could randomly catch the ribbon at the right time. But the equilibrium is so low, that your protease would probably self-digest faster than it takes apart the flat protein sheet.