Yet probably the most striking evidence that AgNPs are toxic to microorganisms via mechanisms that are different than Ag ions comes from an investigation by Morones et al., which showed that the concentration of Ag+ ions released from AgNPs under the tested conditions was too low to account completely for toxicity of AgNPs.
More importantly, these authors were able to demonstrate that AgNPs bind to membrane proteins, forming pits and causing other morphological changes (Fig. 7); AgNPs were also found to react with the phosphorous groups of DNA.