Antibiofilm Activity of Green Synthesized Silver Nanoparticles

Abstract

Numerous diseases that affect both humans and animals are due to the growth of biofilms on a variety of inanimate surfaces. This study investigated bacterial biofilms in water and poultry drinkers and their control using silver nanoparticles (AgNPs). Water and swabs of poultry drinkers were collected from five poultry houses. Isolation and characterization of bacterial isolates were carried out using standard microbiological techniques and identified bacterial isolates were screened for biofilm potential using Congo Red Agar method (CRA) and tube method (TM). Antibiotic susceptibility of the isolates was carried out using the agar well diffusion method. Fungal isolate was used to synthesize AgNPs and the synthesized AgNPs was confirmed through visual, UV-Vis and FT-IR analysis. Fifty-nine bacterial isolates were identified and the predominant bacterial isolates were: Staphylococcus spp and Citrobacter spp. CRA revealed that fifteen isolates (25.4%) were biofilm formers while TM showed only 9 isolates (15.3 %) to be strong biofilm formers. All the biofilm formers were multi drug resistant isolates except Proteus vulgaris and high resistance was observed in gentamycin. The synthesized AgNPs was brown in colour, UV-Vis spectra was observed at 410nm and FT-IR revealed the presence of functional groups that are responsible for the synthesis of silver nanoparticles. AgNPs inhibited the growth of the biofilm formers with highest and lowest inhibition zone of 2.6 cm to 0.4 cm by Proteus vulgaris and Enterobacter aerogene. AgNPs are thus a crucial bio resource due to their capacity to suppress the establishment of bacterial biofilms.