科技动态:杀菌油漆取代消毒水?（在线收听）

Hospitals around the world spend billions of dollars each year to maintain sterile environments. Every surface, especially in operating rooms, must be kept bacteria-free to prevent the spread of disease and the risk of infection. Scientists at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York have come up with a new approach, instead of constantly cleaning surfaces, that would apply a coat of bacterial-killing paints.

全世界的医院每年花费几十亿美元来维护医院的无菌环境。医院的每处表面，尤其是手术室必须保持无菌，这样才能避免传染疾病。纽约伦斯勒理工学院的科学家们最近发现了新方法，与其不断地清洁表面，不如应用一种杀菌涂料。

The researchers have developed a coating that combines enzymes with nanoparticles. Enzymes occur naturally in all living organisms to regulate their chemical processes, like digestion or the killing of disease-causing micro-organisms such as bacteria.

研究人员发明了一种含有纳米颗粒的酶。酶天然存在与人类器官中以保持器官内的化学反应平衡，如人类的消化过程和机体消灭致病微生物——细菌的过程。

"Our focus has been on looking at a technology that allows us to have essentially any surface and make it anti-bacterial or antimicrobial in general, and what we wanna do is essentially use what nature uses."

“我们努力的方向是找到一种常见的，能够消灭大多数细菌的抗菌剂，我们要做的是在自然环境中找到这种药物。”

Dordick says that by attaching enzymes to nanoparticles and then adding them to paint, the researchers have been able to create a bacterial-resistant surface, the team's lab test showed that anti-bacterial paint is far more effective in sterilizing a surface than conventional cleaning.

Dordick表示，将酶中附上纳米粒子，并把他们加到涂料中，研究人员已经将防菌涂料刷到墙上。这一实验室的研究结果表明，杀菌涂料消灭细菌的效果明显高于传统的消毒水的作用。

"Obviously everything has been done in a lab so far. So there is still a translation to commercial side. But in the laboratory, it's quite effective so, for example, if you take this enzyme on the nanomaterial and you contact it with a million cells per milliliter, which is a pretty good concentration, within several hours, you are down to zero. I mean it kills them all."

“很明显，能在实验室中尝试的我们都试了。但用于出售的版本还是和我们实验出的样品不尽相同。在实验室中，这种涂料效果极强，举个例子，如果你用高浓缩的细菌液体，每毫升1百万个细菌细胞接触含有纳米粒子的酶，不出几小时，细菌数量就变为0。也就是说，细菌全部被杀死了。”

Dordick believes that commercialization of bacteria-resistant paint is a realistic possibility. The enzymes are naturally occurring, so are easily produced. As for attaching the enzymes to nanopartices on a commercial scale, Dordick says that advances in nanotechnology research should make it possible in about five years. Dordick believes the ability to apply these anti-bacterial paints in coatings will have applications far beyond the world of healthcare; he says the food processing industry where hygiene and cleanliness are essential to food safety could also benefit from this technology.

Dordick相信用于出售的除菌涂料是最适合实际应用的版本。酶在自然界中广泛存在，所以容易生产。Dordick表示，未来5年，纳米技术的进步将使工业生产附有纳米粒子的酶成为现实。Dordick认为，使用除菌涂料的不仅仅局限于医疗卫生，他说对于食品业来说，清洁卫生的环境同样重要。

Ben Gruber, Reuters.

Ben Gruber报道，路透社消息。

enzyme 酶

nanoparticle 纳米粒子

hygiene 卫生