ABSTRACT
A wide variety of phytochemicals in plants is known to have several health benefits for humans including antimicrobial activity. In recent years, phytochemicals and their functionalized nanoparticles have been highlighted as quorum sensing inhibitors (QSIs). Quorum sensing (QS) is a regulatory mechanism that enables bacteria to make collective decisions with respect to the expression of a specific set of genes which can be related to virulence factors. Most food-borne infectious diseases are caused by bacteria, which proliferate within QS-mediated biofilms. The inhibition of QS is therefore being considered as a new target for antimicrobial chemotherapy. Phytochemicals and their functionalized nanoparticles are important candidate that show antimicrobial and antibiofilm activity. It opens up an exciting new strategy for antimicrobial chemotherapy and leads to the discovery of a new category of antibiotics, which can overcome the issues related to antimicrobial resistance. This review article describes the importance of phytochemicals and functionalized nanoparticles in the field of biofilm treatment as QSI, highlighting the techniques used to identify their biological activity and their mechanisms of action.
