Research

Interaction of silver nanoparticles with HIV-1

Jose Luis Elechiguerra¹ , Justin L Burt¹ , Jose R Morones¹ , Alejandra Camacho-Bragado² , Xiaoxia Gao² , Humberto H Lara³ and Miguel Jose Yacaman^1,2

¹Department of Chemical Engineering, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas 78712, USA

²Texas Materials Institute, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas 78712, USA

³Facultad de Ciencias Biológicas, Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León, San Nicolás de los Garza, Nuevo León, Mexico

author email corresponding author email

Journal of Nanobiotechnology 2005, 3:6doi:10.1186/1477-3155-3-6

Published:	29 June 2005

Abstract

The interaction of nanoparticles with biomolecules and microorganisms is an expanding field of research. Within this field, an area that has been largely unexplored is the interaction of metal nanoparticles with viruses. In this work, we demonstrate that silver nanoparticles undergo a size-dependent interaction with HIV-1, with nanoparticles exclusively in the range of 1–10 nm attached to the virus. The regular spatial arrangement of the attached nanoparticles, the center-to-center distance between nanoparticles, and the fact that the exposed sulfur-bearing residues of the glycoprotein knobs would be attractive sites for nanoparticle interaction suggest that silver nanoparticles interact with the HIV-1 virus via preferential binding to the gp120 glycoprotein knobs. Due to this interaction, silver nanoparticles inhibit the virus from binding to host cells, as demonstrated in vitro.