Gliadin-mediated green preparation of hybrid zinc oxide nanospheres with antibacterial activity and low toxicity

Jinyan Wu,Qun Wang,Peng Ji,Yi Liu,Yuhang Wang,Yajie Zhang,Yansheng Yao,Xianglong Wang

doi:10.1038/s41598-021-89813-0

Jinyan Wu, Qun Wang + Show 6 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-89813-0

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Abstract

The development of inorganic antibacterial agents that impart antibacterial properties to biomaterials has attracted wide attention. The paper introduced a kind of hybrid nanosphere antibacterial agent composed of wheat gliadin (WG) and zinc oxide (ZnO), with antibacterial efficacy and low toxicity. The ZnO/WG hybrid nanospheres were environment-friendly integrated by molecular self-assembly co-precipitating and freeze-drying transformation, and were characterized using X-ray diffraction (XRD), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), scanning electron microscope (SEM), atomic absorption spectroscopy (AAS), specific surface and pore size analysis, bacteriostasis test, reactive oxygen species (ROS) determination and safety evaluation. It was found that the prepared hybrid nanospheres were composed of two components, WG and ZnO, with a diameter scope of 100–200 nm; the content of ZnO in the hybrid nanospheres can reach 46.9–70.2% (w/w); the bacteriostasis tests proved that the prepared ZnO/WG nanospheres generating ROS, have a significant inhibitory effect on E. coli and S. aureus; furthermore, the ZnO/WG nanospheres are relatively safe and highly biocompatible in cells and mice. Therefore, the prepared novel ZnO/WG hybrid nanospheres were supposed to apply in the preparation of anti-infective wound dressings, tissue engineering skin scaffold materials, food, and cosmetics preservatives, and so on.

Highlights

The development of inorganic antibacterial agents that impart antibacterial properties to biomaterials has attracted wide attention
Complexes were self-assembled formed by Z n2+ and wheat gliadin (WG) polypeptides; secondly, two hydroxyl groups substituted two NH2-R-COOH ligands, which resulted in the co-precipitating formation of zinc hydroxic conjugating with WG polypeptides; the co-precipitates lost water and transformed to the zinc oxide (ZnO)/WG nanospheres during the freeze-drying process
ZnO/WG nanospheres were prepared by zinc chloride solution using the self-assembly–freeze-drying method, under the induction of WG, at a suitable pH value

Summary

Introduction

The development of inorganic antibacterial agents that impart antibacterial properties to biomaterials has attracted wide attention. The paper introduced a kind of hybrid nanosphere antibacterial agent composed of wheat gliadin (WG) and zinc oxide (ZnO), with antibacterial efficacy and low toxicity. Metal or metal oxide nanoparticles are currently the main research directions of inorganic antibacterial a gents[10,11,12], especially research concerning microwaveocaloric therapy, sonodynamic treatment, and photoactivated therapy as effective and rapid antibacterial methods has attracted tremendous interest[13]. Composite nanomaterials, obtained by integrating organic and inorganic components, have broad application prospects in many fields. These nanocomposite particles inherited the superior characteristics of the raw materials, and obtained other multi-functional characteristics that are not available in a single component. A growing number of researchers pay attention to the design of core–shell structured composite nanospheres[18,19], which can reduce their toxicity by covering other m aterials[20,21,22], and increase their biocompatibility and water d ispersibility[23,24,25]

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