Green synthesis of Ag nanoparticles in oil-in-water nano-emulsion and evaluation of their antibacterial and cytotoxic properties as well as molecular docking

Abstract

Increasing use of silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) in various fields as mentioned recently like cosmetology, clinical nanotechnologies and medicine causes the growth of a nontoxic and green synthesis methodology. The present study provided a facile stable one-step synthesis of AgNPs in the presence of Artemisia herba-alba, Mentha, Rosmarinus and Ranunculus aqueous oil extract as reductant and stabilizer via oil-in-water nano-emulsion. Due to experimental results, in the presence of Artemisia herba-alba extract, AgNPs indicated smaller size, uniform shape and well dispersed NPs. Synthesized nanostructures characterized by using various techniques like XRD, UV–Vis, FT-IR, TEM, SEM, nano sizer and zeta potential measurements. The effect of some reaction parameters (the molar ratio of AgNO3, extract volume, pH and temperature) on the AgNPs investigated as well. Additionally, strong antibacterial effects of AgNPs found against four gram-negative and three gram-positive bacteria due to cell death according to increasing membrane permeability and bacterial wall integrity disruption. WST-1 exposed cytotoxicity potent index on the cancerous cell lines as established by the low IC50 value of 1 ppm. Binding energy of Ag metal with bacteria calculated by molecular docking and indicated that all bacteria have good interaction with silver NPs and confirmed antibacterial manner of Ag. Therefore, Produced AgNPs can be introduced as an effective antibacterial agent as well as a potent index of cytotoxicity effect on cancerous cell lines that leads to effective usage in nono-drug design and formulations in near future.

Keywords

• Silver nanoparticle
• Green synthesis
• Antibacterial activity
• Cytotoxicity
• Herbal extract
• Molecular docking