Influence of growth media components on the antibacterial effect of silver ions on Bacillus subtilis in a liquid growth medium

Numerous studies have investigated the antibacterial effect of both silver ions and silver nanomaterials on a large diversity of environmentally and clinically relevant bacteria. However, contradictory results are reported in which inhibition concentrations were varying by a 10-fold. This study investigated whether this variance in results could be attributed to the difference in experimental conditions, especially the microbial growth medium. B. subtilis was exposed to 500 µg L(−1) Ag(+) in liquid growth media with different concentrations of some commonly used media components: tryptone, yeast extract, Cl(−), and S(2−). The toxic effect was investigated by means of three complementary analysis techniques: (i) analyzing the growth curves obtained by optical density measurements, (ii) using flow cytometry, and (iii) by transmission electron microscopy. The silver ion toxicity towards B. subtilis decreased as more tryptone, yeast extract, or S(2−) was present. This study demonstrates that the medium composition, rarely acknowledged as an important experimental factor in bacterial toxicity studies, has a profound impact on the observed silver toxicity towards B. subtilis.