Use of a quartz crystal microbalance to investigate the antiadhesive potential of N-acetyl-L-cysteine

The reduction of bacterial biofilm formation on stainless steel surfaces by N-acetyl-L-cysteine (NAC) is attributed to effects on bacterial growth and polysaccharide production, as well as an increase in the wettability of steel surfaces. In this report, we show that NAC-coated stainless steel and polystyrene surfaces affect both the initial adhesion of Bacillus cereus and Bacillus subtilis and the viscoelastic properties of the interaction between the adhered bacteria and the surface. A quartz crystal microbalance with dissipation was shown to be a powerful and sensitive technique for investigating changes in the applied NAC coating for initial cell surface interactions of bacteria. The kinetics of frequency and dissipation shifts were dependent on the bacteria, the life cycle stage of the bacteria, and the surface. We found that exponentially grown cells gave rise to a positive frequency shift as long as their cell surface hydrophobicity was zero. Furthermore, when the characteristics of binding between the cell and the surface for different growth phases were compared, the rigidity increased from exponentially grown cells to starved cells. There was a trend in which an increase in the viscoelastic properties of the interaction, caused by the NAC coating on stainless steel, resulted in a reduction in irreversibly adhered cells. Interestingly, for B. cereus that adhered to polystyrene, the viscoelastic properties decreased, while there was a reduction in adhered cells, regardless of the life cycle stage. Altogether, NAC coating on surfaces was often effective and could both decrease the initial adhesion and increase the detachment of adhered cells and spores. The most effective reduction was found for B. cereus spores, for which the decrease was caused by a combination of these two parameters.