Oral Biofilm Architecture on Natural Teeth

By V. Zijnge, M. B. M. V. Leeuwen, J. Degener, F. Abbas, T. Thurnheer, R. Gmür, H. Harmsen. PLoS ONE, 2010

675 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Periodontitis and caries are infectious diseases of the oral cavity in which oral biofilms play a causative role. Moreover, oral biofilms are widely studied as model systems for bacterial adhesion, biofilm development, and biofilm resistance to antibiotics, due to their widespread presence and accessibility. Despite descriptions of initial plaque formation on the tooth surface, studies on mature plaque and plaque structure below the gum are limited to landmark studies from the 1970s, without appreciating the breadth of microbial diversity in the plaque. We used fluorescent in situ hybridization to localize in vivo the most abundant species from different phyla and species associated with periodontitis on seven embedded teeth obtained from four different subjects. The data showed convincingly the dominance of Actinomyces sp., Tannerella forsythia, Fusobacterium nucleatum, Spirochaetes, and Synergistetes in subgingival plaque. The latter proved to be new with a possibly important role in host-pathogen interaction due to its localization in close proximity to immune cells. The present study identified for the first time in vivo that Lactobacillus sp. are the central cells of bacterial aggregates in subgingival plaque, and that Streptococcus sp. and the yeast Candida albicans form corncob structures in supragingival plaque. Finally, periodontal pathogens colonize already formed biofilms and form microcolonies therein. These in vivo observations on oral biofilms provide a clear vision on biofilm architecture and the spatial distribution of predominant species.

Subfields: Oral Surgery, Periodontics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/78d98ac5e5ecbad2ab9469c86d64c020c6bca4a9

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Oral Surgery

In Periodontics

Citations in the corpus

The Role of Bacteria in the Caries Process (2011, background): “…the composition and function of well-defined microbial communities may offer new insight into the microbial ecosystem in caries, although these methodologies cannot give information about the spatial organization of the predominant genera and species (Dige et al., 2009; Zijnge et al., 2010).”
Composition of the adult digestive tract bacterial microbiome based on seven mouth surfaces, tonsils, throat and stool samples (2012, background): “The Synergistetes phylum, for example, has only recently been described in detailed association with the human oral cavity [36,92], and is still considered potentially environmental due to its common occurrence in, for example, bioreactors [93,94].”
Resistance of bacterial biofilms to disinfectants: a review (2011, background): “In their natural environments, it is clear that biofilms are complex mixtures of different species rather than the model single species biostructures studied by the majority of laboratories (Lyautey et al. 2005; Simoes et al. 2008; Burmolle et al. 2010; Zijnge et al. 2010) (Figure 2).”
The role of bacterial biofilms in chronic infections (2013, background): “(215) Cystic fibrosis lung infections Light microscopy Electron microscopy FISH Høiby (8), Lam et al.”
The subgingival microbiome in health and periodontitis and its relationship with community biomass and inflammation (2013, positive): “The paper point sampling method is thus likely to represent only the outer biofilm microorganisms, undersampling initial colonizers present in the inner biofilm mass attached to the root surface (Zijnge et al., 2010).”
Chapter 12: Human Microbiome Analysis (2012, background): “While we are still investigating the microbiota of the saliva [150] and of the oral soft tissues [151], colonization of the tooth enamel is somewhat better understood due to the removal of significant interaction with host tissue.”