Decontamination of Surfaces From Extremophile Organisms Using Nonthermal Atmospheric-Pressure Plasmas

Abstract

We showed that nonthermal dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) plasma compromises the integrity of the cell membrane of <i xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Deinococcus</i> <i xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">radiodurans</i> , an extremophile organism. In samples of <i xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">D.</i> <i xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">radiodurans</i> , which were dried in a laminar flow hood, we observe that DBD plasma exposure resulted in a six-log reduction in CFU (colony-forming unit) count after 30 min of treatment. When the <i xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Deinococcus</i> <i xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">radiodurans</i> cells were suspended in distilled water and treated, it took only 15 s to achieve a four-log reduction of CFU count.