Yu Yang

Ph.D. candidate

Crops and Soil Sci.

2003-contd.

CV

yangyu3@msu.edu

Toxicity of metal nanoparticles to bacterial species

Dye-doped nanoparticles can be synthesized by the reverse microemulsion method. My nanoparticles are Rubpy dye doped silica nanoparticles. A nanoparticle-based method has been applied on microbial detection and quantitaion. It also can detect the microorganisms in viable but non-culturable state. Their size is around 55 nm, which can be adjusted by the surfactant type and the water-to-surfactant ratio.Since more and more technology have been used in our life, the biosafety evaluation about these nanomaterials is becoming more and more important. I am also quite interested in the effects of the nanoparticles on microbes and environment. I have testified toxicity of some nanoparticles towards some Gram positive and Gram negative species. This TEM picture shows Exiguobacterium Sibiricum with silica nanoparticles.

Figure 1. left panel: Silical nanoparticles, right panel: E. coli cells with intrenalized Si NPs.