Cationic Nanostructures against Foodborne Pathogens

Hybrid Nanoparticles of Poly (Methyl Methacrylate) and Antimicrobial Quaternary Ammonium Surfactants

“…Curiously, DODAB behaved as a better emulsifier than CTAB during the emulsion polymerization process remaining in the PMMA/DODAB NPs after polymerization due to its higher affinity for PMMA than the one exhibited by CTAB [19,20]. At this point, one should recall the nanostructures present in DODAB and CTAB dispersions in water: the DODAB bilayer fragments (DODAB BF) with Dz inside the 56-67 nm range, as determined by DLS or SEM [44,58,59] or CTAB micelles with 10-20 nm of diameter determined by small-angle neutron scattering (SANS) [60]. IT is possible that the higher amount of DODAB in DODAB BF as compared to the amount of CTAB in the micelle improved the emulsifying effect of DODAB and resulted in a smaller NP size for the PMMA/DODAB NPs than the one for the PMMA/CTAB NPs.…”

The Versatile Dioctadecyldimethylammonium Bromide

“…They attract anions, for example, soaps, detergents and hard water constituents, for example, carbonate and sulfate [5]. They are attracted by negatively charged cells such as bacteria or fungus and become attached to them eventually causing their cytoplasmic membrane to leak with membrane damages leading to antimicrobial effects [6][7][8][9]. Certain Quats will biodegrade and the biodegradability decreases with increase in their alkyl chain length [10,11].…”

“…DODAB remarkable interactive capability with opposite charges of silica particles [20][21][22][23], silicon wafers [24], polymeric particles [25][26][27][28][29][30][31]; polymer films [32][33][34], drugs [35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45], nucleic acids [31,46], oligonucleotides [47][48][49], proteins [30,[50][51][52][53][54], peptides [9,[55][56][57], polyelectrolytes [8,9,36,58,59] and many other important surfaces, biological cells, molecules and nanostructures [60][61][62]…”

“…Thereby, the cytotoxicity of the peptide against eukariotic cells was reduced, and the spectrum of antimicrobial activity was broadened since DODAB and Gr displayed complementary activities [56]. More recently, the PMMA/DODAB and DODAB/Gr antimicrobial systems revealed potential uses in food microbiology for killing important food-borne pathogens such as Escherichia coli, Salmonella enterica, Staphylococcus aureus and Listeria monocytogenes [9].Nowadays, a large family of bacterial genes (generally termed quaternary ammonium genes) encode efflux pumps capable of expelling many Quat structures from bacterial cells, leading to a decrease in susceptibility to Quats [99]. Since bacteria will inevitably find ways of resisting the existing antibiotics and Quats, maybe hybrid assemblies of antimicrobials will prove strategical to overcome resistance.…”

“…Table 1 shows some schematic representations of DODAB combinations with gramicidin [56] or biocompatible PMMA polymer in PMMA/DODAB nanoparticles [61]. Their antimicrobial effects against food-borne bacteria were summarized on Table 2 [9].…”