Silver nanoclusters as antimicrobial agents against a range of antimicrobial resistant pathogens

One of the most serious current global threats is the emergence of bacteria that have built resistance to our most powerful available drugs due to drug overuse. As a result, there is an urgency for the discovery of new antimicrobial agents to fight resistance of bacteria. In recent years, various types of nanoparticles and nanoclusters have been researched for this purpose. The advantage of employing nanoparticles in bacteria killing is that the properties of nanoparticles can be customized by altering nanoparticle physicochemical properties, enabling the tuning of mechanisms that bacteria can be killed. In this paper we present our recent findings in our investigation of the antibacterial properties of 5‑mercapto-2-nitrobenzoic acid coated silver nanoclusters against a wide range of pathogenic bacterial species.