Sustainable biosynthesis of metallic silver nanoparticles using barberry phenolic extract: Optimization and evaluation of photocatalytic, in vitro cytotoxicity, and antibacterial activities against multidrug-resistant bacteria

The contamination of water resources by various pollutants such as organometallic compounds and organic pollution is one of the major challenges in all over the world. In the past few years, the cost-effective and eco-friendly synthesis of nanoparticles using environmentally friendly approaches have been developed among scientists. In this research, we synthesized silver nanoparticles by the rapid, inexpensive and eco-friendly process using Berberis vulgaris (B. vulgaris; BV@AgNPs) extract, for the first time. Optimized product was obtained by controlling the molar ratio of raw materials, temperature, contact time, and pH of the reaction. The biosynthesized BV@AgNPs were used as a catalytic, antibacterial, and anticancer agents. The obtained oval and spherical-like BV@AgNPs were characterized by different analytical techniques, including TEM, FESEM, UV–Vis, EDX, XRD, and FT-IR. Characterization of the BV@AgNPs showed the average crystalline size of 45–60 nm and spherical morphology with only few agglomerated particles. The photocatalytic efficiency of BV@AgNPs was determined by degradation of methyl orange in various concentrations of nanocatalyst under sunlight irradiation. The BV@AgNPs exhibited high photocatalytic degradation (97.82%) in short time. The synthesized BV@AgNPs was tested for antibacterial activity using the Mueller-Hinton broth method. Furthermore, the antibacterial effect of the synthesized BV@AgNPs was studied against seven clinically isolated multidrug-resistant bacteria. The MIC value of BV@AgNPs against P. mirabilis (PM-2), E. coli (EC-2), E. faecalis (EF-2), S. aureus (SA-2), A. baumannii (AB-2), P. aeruginosa (PA-2), and K. pneumonia (KP-2) were 1.56, 0.4, 0.8, 1.56, 0.5, 0.4, and 6.25 µg/mL. Determination of the cytotoxic effect of the biosynthesized BV@AgNPs were carried out using two types of cell lines, human gastric cancer cell line (AGS, IC50 = 3.16 µg/mL) and human breast cancer cell line (MCF-7; IC50 = 9.37 µg/mL). These findings suggested that B. vulgaris extract mediated silver nanoparticles can be used in various fields including industrial wastewater treatment and biomedical.