Metagenomic analysis of nitrate-reducing bacteria in the oral cavity: implications for nitric oxide homeostasis.

ABSTRACT: The microbiota of the human lower intestinal tract helps maintain healthy host physiology, for example through nutrient acquisition and bile acid recycling, but specific positive contributions of the oral microbiota to host health are not well established. Nitric oxide (NO) homeostasis is crucial to mammalian physiology. The recently described entero-salivary nitrate-nitrite-nitric oxide pathway has been shown to provide bioactive NO from dietary nitrate sources. Interestingly, this pathway is dependent upon oral nitrate-reducing bacteria, since humans lack this enzyme activity. This pathway appears to represent a newly recognized symbiosis between oral nitrate-reducing bacteria and their human hosts in which the bacteria provide nitrite and nitric oxide from nitrate reduction. Here we mea

SUBMITTER: Hyde ER 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3966736 | biostudies-literature | 2014

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature