Interaction of Bacteriocin-Capped Silver Nanoparticles with Food Pathogens and Their Antibacterial Effect

With the emergence of multiple-drug-resistant pathogens, the antibacterial property of silver in colloidal form has emerged as a potential candidate for combating infectious diseases. A combination of antibacterial agents along with nanosilver could prove to be more potent due to broadened antibacterial spectrum with possibly lower doses. In the present study, a facile single-step green method of synthesizing silver nanoparticles functionalized with an antibacterial peptide from a food-grade lactic acid bacterium is reported. The synthesized enterocin-coated silver nanoparticles showed broad-spectrum inhibition against a battery of food-borne pathogenic bacteria without any detectable toxicity to red blood cells. The present results evince that a new category of biocide based on silver nanoparticles coated with food-grade antibacterials can be developed using simple methods.