Characterization of bacteriophage communities and CRISPR profiles from dental plaque.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Dental plaque is home to a diverse and complex community of bacteria, but has generally been believed to be inhabited by relatively few viruses. We sampled the saliva and dental plaque from 4 healthy human subjects to determine whether plaque was populated by viral communities, and whether there were differences in viral communities specific to subject or sample type.

Results

We found that the plaque was inhabited by a community of bacteriophage whose membership was mostly subject-specific. There was a significant proportion of viral homologues shared between plaque and salivary viromes within each subject, suggesting that some oral viruses were present in both sites. We also characterized Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats (CRISPRs) in oral

SUBMITTER: Naidu M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4104742 | biostudies-literature | 2014 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature