In message <3ca6328b.30094403 at news.earthlink.net>, Davin C. Enigl
<enigl at aol.com> writes
>On Wed, 27 Mar 2002 22:23:53 +0000, Jonathan Silverlight
><jsilver at merseia.fsnet.co.uk> wrote:
>>>I'm fairly sure you can't simply "correct" in that way. Heat proteins to
>>400C and they will melt, or at least denature, whatever the pressure.
>>That is not high enough to denature prions.
>
I think you will find that there is no detectable protein at a much
lower temperature. AFAIK the only study of the actual protein content is
by Appel et al. and they only went up to about 200C.
>As far as pressure, my experiments showed not even a one log reduction
>(and no calculable D-value) up to 65,000 psi in liquid as long as the
>pressure did not drop suddenly. So survival at a constant 65,000 psi
>was no problem for my test bacteria.
>>Does anyone know what the psi is at the deep sea vents? How does the
>pressure there, compare to 65,000 psi?
Well, IIRC the pressure increases by 1 atmosphere for every 33 feet (I'm
too old to think metric right now :-) so it's about 1000 atmospheres
(14000 psi) at the bottom of the deepest trench.
Are you the guy who published that study of bacteria surviving in a
diamond anvil? It was quite widely reported here and the reports were
saying the pressure was equivalent to many kilometres depth of the
Earth's crust - or Europan ice. Amazing.
