Study of the multidrug membrane transporter of single living Pseudomonas aeruginosa cells using size-dependent plasmonic nanoparticle optical probes.

ABSTRACT: Multidrug membrane transporters (efflux pumps) in both prokaryotes and eukaryotes are responsible for impossible treatments of a wide variety of diseases, including infections and cancer, underscoring the importance of better understanding of their structures and functions for the design of effective therapies. In this study, we designed and synthesized two silver nanoparticles (Ag NPs) with average diameters of 13.1 +/- 2.5 nm (8.1-38.6 nm) and 91.0 +/- 9.3 nm (56-120 nm) and used the size-dependent plasmonic spectra of single NPs to probe the size-dependent transport kinetics of MexAB-OprM (multidrug transporter) in Pseudomonas aeruginosa in real time at nanometer resolution. We found that the level of accumulation of intracellular NPs in wild-type (WT) cells was higher than in nalB1 (ov

SUBMITTER: Nallathamby PD 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2912454 | biostudies-literature | 2010 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature