Over the past few decades, inorganic nanoparticles, whosestructures exhibit significantly novel and improved physical,chemical, and biological properties, phenomena, and functionalitydue to their nanoscale size, have elicited much interest.Nanophasic and nanostructured materials are attracting agreat deal of attention because of their potential for achievingspecific processes and selectivity, especially in biological andpharmaceutical applications (5, 39).Discoveries in the past decade have demonstrated that theelectromagnetic, optical, and catalytic properties of noble-metalnanocrystals are strongly influenced by shape and size (6, 26).This has motivated an upsurge in research on the synthesis routesthat allow better control of shape and size (18, 34, 41), withprojected applications in nanoelectronics and spectroscopy (14,19, 36).Recent studies have demonstrated that specially formulatedmetal oxide nanoparticles have good antibacterial activity (33),and antimicrobial formulations comprising nanoparticles couldbe effective bactericidal materials (11, 12).Among inorganic antibacterial agents, silver has been employedmost extensively since ancient times to fight infectionsand control spoilage. The antibacterial and antiviral actions ofsilver, silver ion, and silver compounds have been thoroughlyinvestigated (28, 29, 37). However, in minute concentrations,silver is nontoxic to human cells. The epidemiological historyof silver has established its nontoxicity in normal use. Catalytic
oxidation by metallic silver and reaction with dissolved monovalent
silver ion probably contribute to its bactericidal effect
(17). Microbes are unlikely to develop resistance against silver,
as they do against conventional and narrow-target antibiotics,
because the metal attacks a broad range of targets in the
organisms, which means that they would have to develop a host
of mutations simultaneously to protect themselves. Thus, silver
ions have been used as an antibacterial component in dental
resin composites (15), in synthetic zeolites (22), and in coatings
of medical devices (2).
Recent literature reports encouraging results about the bactericidal
activity of silver nanoparticles of either a simple or
composite nature (21, 31). Elechiguerra and coworkers (9)
found that silver nanoparticles undergo a size-dependent interaction
with human immunodeficiency virus type 1, preferably
via binding to gp120 glycoprotein knobs. The size-dependent
interaction of silver nanoparticles with gram-negative
bacteria has also been reported by the same group (25). However,
little is known about how the biological activity of silver
nanoparticles changes as the shape of the particles changes.
For these reason, we investigated the shape dependence of
the antibacterial activity of silver nanoparticles against Escherichia
coli. Silver nanoparticles of different shapes were synthesized
by solution phase routes, and their interactions with
E. coli were studied. Energy-filtering transmission electron microscopy
(EFTEM) was used as a complementary technique to
examine the treated cells. The size-dependent antimicrobial
activity of silver nanoparticles has already been investigated (9,
25), while to our knowledge the effect of shape on the antibacterial
activity of silver nanoparticles has not been reported
previously
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