Abstract
Maintaining a symbiotic oral microbiota is essential for oral and dental health, and host genetic factors may affect the composition or function of the oral microbiota through a range of possible mechanisms, including immune pathways. The study included 836 Swedish twins divided into separate groups of adolescents (n = 418) and unrelated adults (n = 418). Oral microbiota composition and functions of non-enzymatically lysed oral bacteria samples were evaluated using 16S rRNA gene sequencing and functional bioinformatics tools in the adolescents. Adaptive immune responses were assessed by testing for serum IgG antibodies against a panel of common oral bacteria in adults. In the adolescents, host genetic factors were associated with both the detection and abundance of microbial species, but with considerable variation between species. Host genetic factors were associated with predicted microbiota functions, including several functions related to bacterial sucrose, fructose, and carbohydrate metabolism. In adults, genetic factors were associated with serum antibodies against oral bacteria. In conclusion, host genetic factors affect the composition of the oral microbiota at a species level, and host-governed adaptive immune responses, and also affect the concerted functions of the oral microbiota as a whole. This may help explain why some people are genetically predisposed to the major dental diseases of caries and periodontitis.
Highlights
Bacterial communities in the oral cavity are among the most dense and diverse in the human body [1,2]
The filtered reads corresponded to 8037 amplicon sequence variants (ASVs) of which 5% did not match at all, 28% did not meet the criteria of 98.5% identity, and 63% matched to a species or unnamed phylotype at 98.5% identity in the expanded Human Oral Microbiome Database (eHOMD) 16S rRNA gene database, and were represented by ≥25 reads
We aimed to evaluate the impact of host genetic factors on the oral microbiota and the immune response to oral bacteria with the intention to deepen the understanding of the driving forces behind oral biofilm formation and the potential consequences of the oral microbiota
Summary
Bacterial communities in the oral cavity are among the most dense and diverse in the human body [1,2]. The general understanding from the latter studies is that resilient and diverse profiles of the tooth or saliva bacterial communities are beneficial for health [3,4], there is agreement that the variation in host genetics and environmental exposures affect disease variation [5,6,7]. Several studies demonstrate the importance of parental influence as one important determinant in forming the bacterial communities in the mouth and the gut at early age [9,10]. This might be due to both within-family transmission and genetic predisposition to bacteria acquisition. Sugar intake is known to affect the oral microbiome composition, whereas the relative importance of other environmental and host gene variations on variation and architecture of the oral microbiota are not clearly identified [11]
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