Chemical fabrication of graphene oxide nanosheets attenuates biofilm formation of human clinical pathogens

Abstract

Graphene oxide (GO) has been recently attracted considerable interest for its potential applications in physical, chemical and biological properties. In the present study, the GO nanosheets were prepared by a chemical exfoliation technique using a modified Hummers method. Initially, the prepared GO nanosheets were confirmed by UV-vis spectroscopy and further characterized by FE-SEM, Edax, HR-TEM and SAED that demonstrated the formation of GO nanosheets with few layers flat sheet structure with hexagonal lattice crystalline nature. The FTIR spectra revealed the presence of various oxygen containing functional groups has been produced from graphite plane by exfoliation technique. The prepared GO nanosheets showed excellent antibiotic resistant activity against planktonic bacteria and more effective to damage the established biofilms and inhibits the biofilm formation of human clinical pathogens like E. coli and P. aeruginosa. Further, the GO nanosheets were found to be non-toxic to normal mammalian cells and there are no apparent morphological changes were observed in control and treated cells. In conclusion, GO nanosheets were effectively preventing the formation of biofilms and kills the represent bacteria that suggested the GO nanosheets could be used for the prevention and treatment of biofilm-related infections.

Keywords: Biofilm; E. coli; GO nanosheets; Hummers method; P. aeruginosa.