Toledo seven compact

AgNO 3 were obtained from Carlo Erba, NaBH 4 from Tetrahedron, BSA from Sigma, the Mueller Hinton Broth (MHB) and Agar from Britania and trisodium citrate, NaNO 3 and K 2 HPO 4 from J. T. Baker. All reagents were of analytical grade and used without further purification.
Aqueous solutions were prepared in deionized water (Milli Q System, Millipore). The pH adjustment were performed by adding NaOH or HNO 3 solutions and the pH measurements carried out with a glass electrode and a digital pH meter (Mettler Toledo -Seven Compact). All experiments were performed at room temperature (25 ± 2 • C) unless otherwise stated.

Bovine serum albumin (A-4503) was purchased from Sigma (Saint Louis, MO). This sample was characterized in several works [39, 40] . Bovine and human serum albumin share 76% sequence homology [41] . Glutaraldehyde, chloroform, NaCl, NaH2PO4.H2O, ethanol, dextrose and K2HPO4 were obtained from J.T. Baker, (3-Aminopropyl) trymethoxysilane (APTMS) from Fluka, acetone and dimethyldichlorosilane from Carlo Erba, casein acid peptone, soy peptone and agar from Britania and LIVE/DEAD BacLight Bacterial Viability Kit (L-13152) from Invitrogen. All reagents were of analytical grade and used without further purification.
Aqueous solutions were prepared in 18 M/cm resistance water (Milli-Q, Millipore; Billerica, MA). Phosphate buffer saline (PBS) consists of 5 mM NaH2PO4 solution and 150 mM NaCl solution. The pH adjustment was performed by adding KOH (Baker) or HCl (Baker) solutions and the pH measurements were carried out with a glass electrode and a digital pH meter (Mettler Toledo-Seven Compact). Unless noted, all experiments were performed at room temperature (22±2 °C).