Functional Diversity of the Microbial Community in Healthy Subjects and Periodontitis Patients Based on Sole Carbon Source Utilization

Abstract

Chronic periodontitis is one of the most common forms of biofilm-induced diseases. Most of the recent studies were focus on the dental plaque microbial diversity and microbiomes. However, analyzing bacterial diversity at the taxonomic level alone limits deeper comprehension of the ecological relevance of the community. In this study, we compared the metabolic functional diversity of the microbial community in healthy subjects and periodontitis patients in a creative way—to assess the sole carbon source utilization using Biolog assay, which was first applied on oral micro-ecology assessment. Pattern analyses of 95-sole carbon sources catabolism provide a community-level phenotypic profile of the microbial community from different habitats. We found that the microbial community in the periodontitis group had greater metabolic activity compared to the microbial community in the healthy group. Differences in the metabolism of specific carbohydrates (e.g. β-methyl-D-glucoside, stachyose, maltose, D-mannose, β-methyl-D-glucoside and pyruvic acid) were observed between the healthy and periodontitis groups. Subjects from the healthy and periodontitis groups could be well distinguished by cluster and principle component analyses according to the utilization of discriminate carbon sources. Our results indicate significant difference in microbial functional diversity between healthy subjects and periodontitis patients. We also found Biolog technology is effective to further our understanding of community structure as a composite of functional abilities, and it enables the identification of ecologically relevant functional differences among oral microbial communities.

Differences in carbon source usage by dental plaque in children with and without early childhood caries

“… 23 Apart from these technological advances in microbial flora research, attempts have been made to expand Biolog microplate use to the oral microbial flora. Zhang et al 17 previously used this tool to describe functional diversity based on carbon source use in microbial communities from healthy subjects and periodontitis patients.…”

“…One limitation of this study is the insufficient sample size. We referred to our previous work 17 when we determined the sample size because few studies have investigated carbon source use by the mixed oral microflora. More subjects of varying disease severity should be included in future studies.…”

“…The Biolog assay was created specifically for community analysis and microbial ecological studies, and it uses a rapid, community-level physiological profile to assess patterns of sole carbon source use by mixed microbial samples. 16 – 17 …”

The Microbiome and Sustainable Healthcare

“…To date, most prototype microbiome data have come from comparisons among healthy groups vs. specific disease cohorts. Both sequencing [ 159 ] and functional metabolism (e.g., carbon sources) [ 160 ] approaches have been used. Recently, clear distinctions among patterns of microbial dysbiois have been noted [ 161 ].…”

Parallelized, Aerobic, Single Carbon-Source Enrichments from Different Natural Environments Contain Divergent Microbial Communities

“…This approach allows the utilization of an array of carbon compounds by microbial communities to be monitored in parallel using 96-well plates. These substrate arrays are frequently used to test the metabolic capabilities of the microbiome inhabiting soil, water, and other environments (Bartscht et al, 1999 ; King, 2003 ; Weber and Legge, 2009 ; Gryta et al, 2014 ; Zhang Y. et al, 2014 ). Given that the composition of the communities that grow from the inocula in these arrays is rarely, if ever, characterized directly, the extent to which the “active” populations utilizing a particular substrate are representative of the community at large remains unclear (Konopka et al, 1998 ; Haack et al, 2004 ).…”