New toxicity mechanism of silver nanoparticles: promoting apoptosis and inhibiting proliferation.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 25822182.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1371/journal.pone.0122535 and PMC identifier 4378976.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
Silver nanoparticles are increasingly recognized for their utility in biological applications, especially antibacterial effects. Herein, we confirmed the antibacterial effect of silver nanoparticles on Escherichia coli using the conventional optical density (OD) and colony-forming units (CFU) method and used flow cytometry (FC), TEM and BrdU ELISA to investigate the mechanisms of this effect. From the results, we conclude that AgNPs can simultaneously induce apoptosis and inhibit new DNA synthesis in the cells in a positive concentration-dependent manner. This study presents the first induction of apoptosis in these bacteria by AgNPs in this field. Our findings may provide a new strategy for the use of silver nanoparticles in antibacterial applications.
Medical subject headings
- Anti-Bacterial Agents
- Apoptosis
- Metal Nanoparticles
- Silver