Investigating the antibacterial activity of Thyme Oil/TiO2 modified resins against oral pathogenic bacteria

With the rapid expansion in the nanotechnology industry, it is essential that the safety of engineered nanomaterials and the factors that influence their associated hazards are understood. A vital area governing regulatory health risk assessment is genotoxicology (the study of genetic aberrations following exposure to test agents), as DNA damage may initiate and promote carcinogenesis, or impact fertility. Of late, considerable attention has been given to the toxicity of engineered nanomaterials, but the importance of their genotoxic potential on human health has been largely overlooked. This comprehensive review focuses on the reported abilities of metal nanoparticles, metal-oxide nanoparticles, quantum dots, fullerenes, and fibrous nanomaterials, to damage or interact with DNA, and their ecogenotoxicity is also considered. Many of the engineered nanomaterials assessed were found to cause genotoxic responses, such as chromosomal fragmentation, DNA strand breakages, point mutations, oxidative DNA adducts and alterations in gene expression profiles. However, there are clear inconsistencies in the literature and it is difficult to draw conclusions on the physico-chemical features of nanomaterials that promote genotoxicity, largely due to study design. Hence, areas that require that further attention are highlighted and recommendations to improve our understanding of the genotoxic potential of engineered nanomaterials are addressed.

In recent year, propagation and resistance of pathogenic microorganisms (bacteria, fungi and virals) to common antimicrobial agents has led to serious health and food problems. Today, nanotechnology science and nanoparticles (NPs) have been identified as a new approach to deal with this problem because of their inherent antimicrobial activity. Several studies have reported that, NPs (metal and metal oxide) are considered as a group of materials that can be studied due to their antimicrobial properties. In this review, we investigated recent studies regarding the antimicrobial activity of NPs with their mechanism of action. Many research has proved that particle size is a significant factor which indicates the antimicrobial effectiveness of NPs. The use of NPs as antimicrobial component especially in the food additives and medical application can be one of the new and considerable strategies for overcoming pathogenic microorganisms. Nevertheless, more studies must be conducted to minimize the possible toxicity of NPs in order to use as suitable alternatives for disinfectants and antibacterial agents in food applications.