No mouth is an island – human oral microbial community composition in health and disease
Event details
| Date | 17.08.2011 |
| Hour | 11:30 |
| Speaker | Dr Katrine Whiteson, Genomic Research Laboratory, Division of Infectious Diseases, University of Geneva Hospitals |
| Location | |
| Category | Conferences - Seminars |
I will describe a few different studies of human oral microbial communities carried out in the Genomic Research Lab at the University of Geneva Hospitals. Using high throughput sequencing it is now possible to directly access information about microbes that were previously unknown because of culturing difficulties. We use both Illumina and 454 sequencing technology to study the 16S rRNA gene and characterize how the bacterial communities change over space and time. Our studies of saliva from healthy people are an important background for understanding the variation and stability of the oral bacterial communities between people and in the same person over time. In one study we examine the communities from four families comprised of two parents and two children to see how similar their communities are. I will also present a study of malnourished children from Niger some of whom have NOMA (cancrum oris) a devastating ancient illness which causes severe facial disfigurement in >140 000 malnourished children every year. The cause of NOMA is elusive. A chaotic mix of microbial infection oral hygiene and weakened immune system likely contribute to the development of oral lesions. Multi-dimensional scaling (MDS) and Analysis of Similarity (ANOSIM) from a Bray-Curtis similarity matrix of 97% OTU abundance in PRIMER both show significant differences between the microbial communities found in the samples taken from NOMA affected sites compared to controls and unaffected sites. This seminar will introduce several recent breakthroughs from studies of human microbial communities describe our approach and our findings.
Practical information
- General public
- Free
Contact
- Dr Nichole Broderick