How Does Hypochlorous Acid Affect Bacteria

Escherichia coli, a bacteria with an optimal pH of between 6.5 to 7.0 to enhance its proliferation is very commonly used in laboratories and studies worldwide due to its low cost and high effectiveness and will therefore be the bacteria of choice for this investigation. It has been shown in many studies such as the article “HdeB chaperone activity is coupled to its intrinsic dynamic properties” very recently published in the prestigious magazine Nature that bacterial growth and overall metabolism can be inhibited by alterations in the pH of the culture. The active ingredient hypochlorous acid, found in bleach, affects proteins in bacteria by changing the pH of the environment and therefore denaturing them by affecting their secondary and tertiary structures. Moreover, hypochlorous acid has been found to have the same …show more content…
Coli is therefore no exception. Those enzymes carry out many different functions in the cell and are of vital importance, so their pH sensitivity puts cells at a great risk when confronted by a change in pH. This is due to the covalent bonds between amino acids that have a positive charged part and another negative one. Oppositely charged areas have to match with each other when the substrate binds to the active site, and when the solution becomes too basic, a large number of hydroxide ions will bond to the positive charges of either the substrate or active site, preventing a perfect matching charge and making the enzyme less efficient and sometimes totally inactive. Furthermore, as the solution becomes more alkaline and more negative charges are present, the enzyme will eventually become denatured and thus lose the 3D shape and leading to a dysfunction in their respective function. In the end, the inhibition of enzymes will cause the death of E. coli bacterium as the proteins that are essential for bacterial growth will clump together and thus become inactivated, just like heat does, and kill