Supervisors info:
Θεόδωρος Δαλαμάγκας, Δρ., Διευθυντής Ερευνών, Ερευνητικό Κέντρο «ΑΘΗΝΑ»
Γιώργος Γεωργακίλας, Δρ., Επιστημονικός συνεργάτης, Ερευνητικό Κέντρο «ΑΘΗΝΑ»
Άρτεμις Χατζηγεωργίου, Καθηγήτρια, Πανεπιστήμιο Θεσσαλίας
Summary:
Metagenomics and metatranscriptomics studies have reshaped our understanding of oral microbial communities and their functional potential. Nevertheless, these studies have not consistently produced uniform results, thus prompting the need for cross-study comparisons to obtain more robust findings. Here, a meta-analysis of four geographically and technically diverse oral shotgun metatranscriptomics studies of human periodontitis was performed. In total, 54 subgingival plaque samples, 27 healthy and 27 periodontitis, were included. By treating the study as a random effect variable and with a false discovery rate (FDR) threshold of 10-3, we identified 26 differentially abundant species, most of which have previously been associated with oral microbiome or periodontal disease. The core microbiota (defined by 80% group occurrence and top 25% relative abundance) of the healthy and periodontitis group comprised 40 and 80 species, respectively. Notably, 38 species of the healthy core microbiota were shared with the periodontitis group’s core. Functional analysis showed that 50 gene families (UniRef-90) involved in transmembrane transport and secretion, amino acid metabolism, surface protein and flagella synthesis, energy metabolism, and DNA supercoiling, were significantly more transcribed (FDR ≤ 10-2) in periodontitis samples. Additionally, 4 bacterial virulence factor genes, from Virulence Factor DataBase (VFDB), including TonB-dependent receptor from P. gingivalis, surface antigen BspA from T. forsynthia, and adhesin A (PsaA) and Type I glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase (GAPDH) from the Streptococcus genus, were also found to be significantly more transcribed (FDR ≤ 0.05) in periodontitis group. These findings promote our understanding of the oral microbiome and transcriptome in health and periodontitis.
Keywords:
Periodontitis, metatranscriptomics, Meta-analysis, microbial network analysis, microbiome, core-microbiome, Oral microbiome, Dysbiosis
