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Effects of Orange II and Sudan III azo dyes and their metabolites on Staphylococcus aureus

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Journal of Industrial Microbiology & Biotechnology

Abstract

Azo dyes are widely used in the plastic, paper, cosmetics, food, and pharmaceutical industries. Some metabolites of these dyes are potentially genotoxic. The toxic effects of azo dyes and their potential reduction metabolites on Staphylococcus aureus ATCC BAA 1556 were studied. When the cultures were incubated with 6, 18, and 36 μg/ml of Orange II and Sudan III for 48 h, 76.3, 68.5, and 61.7% of Orange II and 97.8, 93.9, and 75.8% of Sudan III were reduced by the bacterium, respectively. In the presence of 36 μg/ml Sudan III, the cell viability of the bacterium decreased to 61.9% after 48 h of incubation, whereas the cell viability of the control culture without the dye was 71.5%. Moreover, the optical density of the bacterial cultures at 10 h decreased from 0.74 to 0.55, indicating that Sudan III is able to inhibit growth of the bacterium. However, Orange II had no significant effects on either cell growth or cell viability of the bacterium at the tested concentrations. 1-Amino-2-naphthol, a metabolite common to Orange II and Sudan III, was capable of inhibiting cell growth of the bacterium at 1 μg/ml and completely stopped bacterial cell growth at 24–48 μg/ml. On the other hand, the other metabolites of Orange II and Sudan III, namely sulfanilic acid, p-phenylenediamine, and aniline, showed no significant effects on cell growth. p-Phenylenediamine exhibited a synergistic effect with 1-amino-2-naphthol on cell growth inhibition. All of the dye metabolites had no significant effects on cell viability of the bacterium.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Drs. Huanli Liu, Rajesh Nayak, and Robin Stingley for their critical review of the manuscript, Dr. Mark Hart for strain ATCC BAA 1556, and Ohgew Kweon for helpful discussions. This study was funded by the Office of Women’s Health and the National Center for Toxicological Research, United States Food and Drug Administration, and supported in part by appointments (HP and JF) to the Postgraduate Research Fellowship Program by the Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education through an interagency agreement between the US Department of Energy and the US Food and Drug Administration. The views presented in this article do not necessarily reflect those of the Food and Drug Administration.

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  1. Division of Microbiology, National Center for Toxicological Research, US FDA, 3900 NCTR Rd., Jefferson, AR, 72079-9502, USA

    Hongmiao Pan, Jinhui Feng, Carl E. Cerniglia & Huizhong Chen

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  1. Hongmiao Pan
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  2. Jinhui Feng
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Correspondence to Huizhong Chen.

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Pan, H., Feng, J., Cerniglia, C.E. et al. Effects of Orange II and Sudan III azo dyes and their metabolites on Staphylococcus aureus . J Ind Microbiol Biotechnol 38, 1729–1738 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10295-011-0962-3

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