Based on the research you found on your compound, do you know if it is currently being actively pursued as an antibiotic? I’m just curious because it worked so well.
Hi! We found multiple articles that talked about AgNPs antibiotic properties on several other strains of bacteria such as Ecoli. However, AgNPs are a realitively new compound being tested on and all research has been published within the last few years. Some articles talk about AgNPs as having toxic qualities so more research needs to be done before it can be fully pursued as an antibiotic.
Do you know if there is research being done currently to determine what specific mechanisms of AgNPs work to attack bacteria such as Salmonella Typhimurium, or are the mechanisms completely unknown or unconfirmed at this time?
All the articles about their mechanism of attack are chemist proposing mechanisms, nothing has been confirmed. The most likely mechanism of attack is through contact killing where the AgNPs produce free radicals making reactive oxygen species. Reactive oxygen species are a very common thing for antibiotics to release which is why this is speculated to be the most likely mechanism. We are unsure if there are any current experiments testing this mechanism however there could be but the research might not be published due to recent discovery of AgNPs antibiotic properties.
Hi! Thank you so much for your question unfortunately this was not a focus of our research so I do not have an answer for you, but I will definitely look more into it.
Hi! Because we were working with dilutions that have concentrations as low as 109.95 ug / 100 uL there is the chance that there was no silver or minimal amounts of silver taken up in the pipet and placed in the well to interact with the Salmonella Typhimurium. This is a possible reason why lower dilutions produced unexpected absorbance values.
Do you know why no new antibiotic strains have been found since the 80’s? Did we stop researching or lower our efforts, or did we just reach some sort of plateau research wise?
Hello! There have been no new classes of antibiotics since the 1980s because it is very expensive and time consuming to test thousands of compounds for potential antibiotic activity. Most of the compounds tested will end up failing so there are few labs that are willing to spend the money and take the time to test these compounds. These labs would rather use medicinal chemistry to slightly alter a current antibiotic. However, because these “new” antibiotics only differ in functional groups, bacteria are still resistant to them.
Based on the research you found on your compound, do you know if it is currently being actively pursued as an antibiotic? I’m just curious because it worked so well.
Hi! We found multiple articles that talked about AgNPs antibiotic properties on several other strains of bacteria such as Ecoli. However, AgNPs are a realitively new compound being tested on and all research has been published within the last few years. Some articles talk about AgNPs as having toxic qualities so more research needs to be done before it can be fully pursued as an antibiotic.
Do you know if there is research being done currently to determine what specific mechanisms of AgNPs work to attack bacteria such as Salmonella Typhimurium, or are the mechanisms completely unknown or unconfirmed at this time?
All the articles about their mechanism of attack are chemist proposing mechanisms, nothing has been confirmed. The most likely mechanism of attack is through contact killing where the AgNPs produce free radicals making reactive oxygen species. Reactive oxygen species are a very common thing for antibiotics to release which is why this is speculated to be the most likely mechanism. We are unsure if there are any current experiments testing this mechanism however there could be but the research might not be published due to recent discovery of AgNPs antibiotic properties.
Is there any concern about AgNPs contributing to environmental contamination?
Hi! Thank you so much for your question unfortunately this was not a focus of our research so I do not have an answer for you, but I will definitely look more into it.
What do you think caused the lower concentrations to produce such unexpected absorbance values?
Hi! Because we were working with dilutions that have concentrations as low as 109.95 ug / 100 uL there is the chance that there was no silver or minimal amounts of silver taken up in the pipet and placed in the well to interact with the Salmonella Typhimurium. This is a possible reason why lower dilutions produced unexpected absorbance values.
Do you know why no new antibiotic strains have been found since the 80’s? Did we stop researching or lower our efforts, or did we just reach some sort of plateau research wise?
Hello! There have been no new classes of antibiotics since the 1980s because it is very expensive and time consuming to test thousands of compounds for potential antibiotic activity. Most of the compounds tested will end up failing so there are few labs that are willing to spend the money and take the time to test these compounds. These labs would rather use medicinal chemistry to slightly alter a current antibiotic. However, because these “new” antibiotics only differ in functional groups, bacteria are still resistant to them.