Test of Degradation of Soman and Sarin Gas by Organophosphorus Acid Anhydrolase and Applicability of the Enzyme to the Development of Nerve Agent Decontaminant

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Journal of the Korea Institute of Military Science and Technology 1999;2(2):140-147.

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신경작용제 분해효소의 Soman 및 Sarin Gas 분해 능력 측정 및 제독응용 가능성

김석찬, 이남택

¹군사과학대학원 재료과학과
²육군사관학교 화학과

Abstract

A gene expressing organophosphorus acid (OPA) anhydrolases have been cloned from Alteromonas haloplanktis strain and expressed in bacterial strain BL21. Crude extract was prepared from the transformed bacterial strain BL2l and used in testing its degrading capability of real nerve gas, soman and sarin. Within 1 minute after the start of the reaction, nearly 65% of the soman added to the reactant(3mM) was degraded by adding 1 mg of the crude extract enzyme(20.0 Unit $mg^-{1}$ crude protein). In 6 minutes, the reaction reached at its steady state, which indicates that soman was completely degraded by that time. In the case of sarin, the degradation efficiency was observed to be about 0.7 times of that of soman. If the specific activity of OPAA is enhanced by both increased expression efficiency and purification, OPAA seems to be applied for the development of decontaminant of skin, especially of eye.

Key Words: organophosphorus acid (OPA) anhydrolases