related to easily destroyed intracellular components. Further increase in the number of inactivated cells
is associated with accumulation of injuries P3 (heavily destroyed intracellular components). The third
stage can be associated with injuries of the cell wall and membrane(s). Indeed, the experiments of paper
[4] show a high number of the destroyed cells after plasma sterilization at low pressure. So, destroying
the DNA plays not always an essential role in the cell inactivation (e.g., in our opinion, under low-pressure
conditions of the paper [4]).
According to our calculations, under NTP sterilization at atmospheric pressure the sequence for
quantitative contributions of injuries is another: P2, P3, P4, P1. It means that the third stage can be associated
predominantly with destroying the DNA. In other words, destroying the cell wall and membrane(
s) cannot be essential for inactivation under atmospheric pressure conditions. A possible reason
for the dissimilarity mentioned above is a different mixture of active agents generated by NTP at low
and atmospheric pressure.