RESUMO
Bacterial infections are a serious issue for public health and represent one of the major challenges of modern medicine. In this work, a selective antimicrobial strategy based on triggering of pore-forming toxin, which is secreted by infective bacteria, was designed to fight Staphylococcus aureus. The antimicrobial activity is realized by employing Eucalyptus citriodora oil as antibiotic which in this study is encapsulated in nanoliposomes.
Assuntos
Antibacterianos/farmacologia , Eucalyptus/química , Lipossomos/química , Nanoestruturas/química , Óleos de Plantas/farmacologia , Staphylococcus aureus/efeitos dos fármacos , Staphylococcus aureus/metabolismo , Antibacterianos/síntese química , Antibacterianos/química , Toxinas Bacterianas/metabolismo , Escherichia coli/efeitos dos fármacos , Testes de Sensibilidade Microbiana , Óleos de Plantas/química , Especificidade da Espécie , Relação Estrutura-Atividade , Especificidade por SubstratoRESUMO
By means of scanning tunneling microscopy (STM), we have observed for the first time well-ordered supramolecular nanopatterns formed by mixing two complementary DNA bases: adenine (A) and thymine (T), respectively, at the liquid/solid interface. By mixing A and T at a specific mixing molar ratio, cyclic structures that were distinctly different from the structures observed by the individual base molecules separately were formed. From an interplay between the STM findings and self-consistent charge density-functional based tight-binding (SCC-DFTB) calculation method, we suggest formation of A-T-A-T quartets constructed on the basis of A-T base pairing. The formation of the A-T-A-T quartets opens new avenues to use DNA base pairing as a way to form nanoscale surface architecture and biocompatible patterned surfaces particularly via host-guest complexation that might be suitable for drug design, where the target can be trapped inside the cavities of the molecular containers.