Table 1.

Summary of the effects of different physical and biochemical stimuli on bacteria.

Stimulus	Effect on bacterial cell	Advantages	Disadvantages	Common features
Mechanical	Membrane disruption (Hazan et al., 2006; Chen et al., 2010)	Antifouling/Antibiofilm (Mah and O'Toole, 2001; Hazan et al., 2006; Paces et al., 2014)	In the case of ultrasound, the acoustic cavitation of microbubbles in the blood may cause rupture of blood vessels (Chen et al., 2010)
Magnetic	Interfere with ion transport in the membrane/membrane rupture (Worcester, 1978)	Possibility of remote stimulus (Dobson, 2008; Guduru and Khizroev, 2014) Oxidative stress (ROS formation)-based killing effect (Ghodbane et al., 2013)	Surrounding temperature may increase—promoting eukaryotic cell death (Ghodbane et al., 2013)	Possibility of using in synergy with commonly used antimicrobials (Qian et al., 1997; Rediske et al., 1999; Justin and Thomas, 2012)Decreased virulenceReduced risk of drug resistance
Electric	Electro permeabilization or irreversible electroporation (Valič et al., 2003, 2004)	Oxidative stress (ROS, H2O2 and RNS formation)-based (Valič et al., 2004; Boda and Basu, 2017) Possibility of triggering proliferation of bacterial cells (Ueshima et al., 2002; Carvalho et al., 2019)	Requires the application of an electrical field on bacterial solution—not recommendable for in vivo applications (Boda and Basu, 2017)
Bio-chemical	Chemotaxis (Mao et al., 2003)	Effectiveness of antibiotics for killing pathogenic bacteria	Possibility of developing resistance
	Quorum quenching (Hentzer and Givskov, 2003; Roche et al., 2004; Ni et al., 2009; Rutherford and Bassler, 2012)	QS autoinducers degradation (Ivanova et al., 2013, 2015a,b,c) Attenuates virulence (Ivanova et al., 2013, 2015c)	Endogenous stimuli (the stimuli needs to be applied internally)