Composition of microbial oral biofilms during maturation in young healthy adults

PLoS One. 2014 Feb 4;9(2):e87449. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0087449. eCollection 2014.

Abstract

In the present study we aimed to analyze the bacterial community structure of oral biofilms at different maturation stages in young healthy adults. Oral biofilms established on membrane filters were collected from 32 human subjects after 5 different maturation intervals (1, 3, 5, 9 and 14 days) and the respective phylogenetic diversity was analyzed by 16S rDNA amplicon sequencing. Our analyses revealed highly diverse entire colonization profiles, spread into 8 phyla/candidate divisions and in 15 different bacterial classes. A large inter-individual difference in the subjects' microbiota was observed, comprising 35% of the total variance, but lacking conspicuous general temporal trends in both alpha and beta diversity. We further obtained strong evidence that subjects can be categorized into three clusters based on three differently occurring and mutually exclusive species clusters.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Bacteria / growth & development*
  • Biofilms / growth & development*
  • Health*
  • Humans
  • Mouth / microbiology*
  • Species Specificity
  • Young Adult

Grants and funding

This work was funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) through grant SCHM1032/10-1 and grant EB223/5-1 (http://www.dfg.de). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.