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Modulated Antimicrobial Activity and Drug-Protein Interaction Ability of Zinc Oxide and Cadmium Sulfide Nanoparticles: Effect of Doping with Few First-Row Transition Metals

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Abstract

ZnO and CdS nanoparticle (NP) doped with first row transition metal ions showed significant antibacterial activity towards Gram-negative as well as Gram-positive bacteria. While, the antibacterial activity of ZnO NPs was found to be significant in Gram-negative bacteria, the effect was comparatively less pronounced towards Gram-positive bacteria. The activity was found to increase with increasing concentration of the NPs. Doping of ZnO NP with Fe atom resulted in significant reduction in the efficacy its antimicrobial activity. In comparison, CdS quantum dot showed antibacterial activity both in Gram-negative and Gram-positive bacteria. While Co doped CdS particles did not show any modulated antibacterial activity; doping by Fe atom augments it with increasing the dopant concentration. The interaction of anti-diabetic drug chlorpropamide is significantly stronger with bovine serum albumin adsorbed on Fe-doped CdS in comparison with undoped NPs without significant alteration in the protein secondary structure. Present study reveals that the drug binding ability of proteins can be significantly modulated on judicious choice of NP system and also the dopant. The modulation in antimicrobial activity and the drug binding ability of the adsorbed protein was explained on the basis of structural parameters and different physicochemical properties of the doped NP systems.

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Acknowledgements

IRS and UC are recipients of research fellowship from NEHU. PM thanks DST INSPIRE program for providing PhD fellowship.

Funding

Partial financial support for this research was received from Dept. of Science & Technology, Govt. of India (Grant number—SR/FST/CSI-194/2008).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Chemistry, North-Eastern Hill University, Shillong, 793 022, India

    Imocha Rajkumar Singh & Sivaprasad Mitra

  2. Department of Biotechnology & Bioinformatics, North-Eastern Hill University, Shillong, 793 022, India

    Upashna Chettri & S. R. Joshi

  3. Department of Physics, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, 221005, India

    Piyali Maity & Anup K. Ghosh

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Contributions

IRS: Data curation, writing—original draft preparation; PM: Synthesis of nanoparticles, AKG: Software, validation; UC: antibacterial study; SRJ: Data analysis, writing; SM: Designing the experiments, analyzing the data, Writing- Reviewing and editing, funding arrangement.

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Correspondence to Sivaprasad Mitra.

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Singh, I.R., Chettri, U., Maity, P. et al. Modulated Antimicrobial Activity and Drug-Protein Interaction Ability of Zinc Oxide and Cadmium Sulfide Nanoparticles: Effect of Doping with Few First-Row Transition Metals. J Clust Sci 34, 799–811 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10876-022-02257-y

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