Is this accurate?

Question

In The video game of The Da Vinci Code; the chemicals chitnase, dismutase, and catalase are combined to clean a painting.

Is this scientifically accurate? And if so could you explain why?

Answer 1

Sounds a bit weird...
All of them are enzymes and you would need more things to make them work.

Chitinase (and not chitnase) is an enzyme breaking down a polysaccharide (chitin) that is a component of cell walls of fungi. So a wild guess is that it could somehow be used for removing fungi like mold.

The problem is dismutase and catalase.
Both are enzymes catalyzing redox reactions.
The most common dismutase that I know of is superoxide dismutase, which catalyzes the break down of superoxide ions O2(-) (oxidation number -1/2) to oxygen in peroxide H2O2 (oxidation number -1) and elemental O2 gas (oxidation number 0)
The reaction is called dismutation because the same reactant (that is O2(-)) is both oxidised and reduced in the same chemical reaction forming 2 separate compounds.:

2O2(-)+dismutase + 2H(+) -> H2O2 + O2 + dismutase

Catalase does the same thing to H2O2, breaking it down to H2O and O2.

Both enzymes are used for breaking down molecules which are not very stable over time.
Superoxides react readily with water to give the respective hydroxides and O2.
Hydrogen peroxide breaks down with time even on its own.

Both superoxides and H2O2 are good oxidants and one wouldn't expect to find them as end-products of aging of inorganic/organic pigments/dyes. Actually the final products are more likely to be already oxidised and need reducing.

H2O2 can act as a reducing agent under certain conditions however I think it is too far-fetched to assume that they manage to do that and then use catalase to remove the excess of H2O2...

Concluding I find very hard to believe that the use of catalase and especially superoxide dismutase is realistic.

Answer 2

Chitinase, dismutase, and catalase are all enzymes. While one could call them "chemicals", man cannot synthesize them, he must obtain them from living cells.

Dismutase and catalase typically handle peroxides and superperoxides. I suppose if a painting has these contaminants, they might be useful. Chitinase breaks down chitin, the major component of the cell walls of fungi and insects. It's possible that old paintings might have fungi on them.

Answer 3

it can be

chitinase - for chitin, a common polymer found in molluscans, the stain might have some polysaccharide derivative, much like starch.
the catalase - often used in microbiology, to differentiate staph from strep, it breaks down hydrogen peroxide (agua oxynada); it may help to break down some component of the stain
the dismutase works in reverse with the catalse, in that it nulls the free-radicals that is produced from the catalse rxn

Answer 4

i agree with belerophon...

a peroxide is not going to make a painting dirty. peroxides generally don't form naturally from anything in paint (oil especially). they usually have to have a light source to make them and i would think that the lourve would have low energy light so that peroxide wouldn't be generated. if the painting was sitting in the sun, then yeah, i could see the need for catalase but that's only to keep the peroxides from destroying the painting, not to clean the painting.

Answer 5

pls send me a CD of this game and then maybe i can hellp you