On January 9, 2018, Prof. Ruhong Zhou’s group and associateProf. Cuicui Ge’s research group from School for Radiological andInterdisciplinary Sciences have  published a research article on Nature Communcations on the topic “DifferentialPd-Nanocrystal Facets Demonstrate Distinct Antibacterial Activity against Gram-positiveand Gram-negative Bacteria”.

With the recent advances in nanoscience andnanotechnology, nanoenzymes have been one of the best candidates in artificialenzymes since nanoenzyme was reported in 2007, which are advantageous inseveral aspects, such as low cost, ease of mass production, robustness to harshenvironments, high stability, long-term storage. However, there is still aproblem of the relatively low catalytic activity of nanoenzymes compared withnatural enzymes. Therefore,howto effectively improve the catalytic activity of the nanoenzyme and reveal itsmolecular mechanism will be the key issue of the developing their application.

In this study, Prof. Zhou and colleagues found thatPd nanocrystals display facet-dependent enzyme-like activities and therebyexerting differential antibacterial activities against Gram-positive bacteria. Areverse trend of antibacterial activity is observed against Gram-negativebacteria, because Pd octahedrons displaying stronger penetration into bacterialmembranes than Pd nanocubes.

The current study provides a first completedescription of the surprising differential antibacterial activities ofnoble-metal nanocrystals enclosed by different surface facets in fightingagainst different bacterial strains and might open up a new door for developingnovel and selective antibacterial applications with these nanomaterials.

Distinct antibacterial activity of Pdnancrystals by tuning facet

Prof. Ruhong Zhou, A/Prof. Cuicui Ge, and Prof.Chunying Chen are the co-corresponding author of the paper, and Dr. Ge Fang andA/Prof. Weifeng Li are the first co-author. The work was done with the closecollaboration of a large group of institutions, which include College ofChemistry and Chemical Engineering of Jiangxi Normal University, IBM Thomas J.Watson Research Center, Key Laboratory for Biomedical Effects of Nanomaterialsand Nanosafety and CAS Center for Excellence in Nanoscience of National Centerfor Nanoscience and Technology of China and Institute of High Energy Physics, ChineseAcademy of Sciences and Department of Chemistry of Columbia University. Theproject was financially supported by the National Basic Research Program ofChina (973 Program Grant Number 2014CB931900 and 2016YFA0201600), NationalNatural Science Foundation of China (11575123, 11574224, and 21320102003), theNSFC Distinguished Young Scholars (11425520), Collaborative Innovation Centerof Radiological Medicine of Jiangsu Higher Education Institutions, JiangsuProvincial Key Laboratory of Radiation Medicine and Protection, and A Project Fundedby the Priority Academic Program Development of Jiangsu Higher Education Institutions(PAPD).

The original link:https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-017-02502-3