Affiliation:
1. National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research, National Institutes of Health, Building 30, Room 310, Bethesda, Maryland 20892
2. Colgate Palmolive Company, Piscataway, New Jersey 08855
Abstract
ABSTRACT
Formation of dental plaque is a developmental process involving initial and late colonizing species that form polymicrobial communities. Fusobacteria are the most numerous gram-negative bacteria in dental plaque, but they become prevalent after the initial commensal colonizers, such as streptococci and actinomyces, have established communities. The unusual ability of these bacteria to coaggregate with commensals, as well as pathogenic late colonizers, has been proposed to facilitate colonization by the latter organisms. We investigated the integration of
Fusobacterium nucleatum
into multispecies communities by employing two in vitro models with saliva as the sole nutritional source. In flow cell biofilms, numbers of cells were quantified using fluorescently conjugated antibodies against each species, and static biofilms were analyzed by quantitative real-time PCR (q-PCR) using species-specific primers. Unable to grow as single-species biofilms,
F. nucleatum
grew in two-species biofilms with
Actinomyces naeslundii
but not with
Streptococcus oralis
. However, enhanced growth of fusobacteria was observed in three-species biofilms, indicating that there was multispecies cooperation. Importantly, these community dynamics yielded an 18-fold increase in the
F. nucleatum
biomass between 4 h and 18 h in the flow cell inoculated with three species. q-PCR analysis of static biofilms revealed that maximum growth of the three species occurred at 24 h to 36 h. Lower numbers of cells were observed at 48 h, suggesting that saliva could not support higher cell densities as the sole nutrient. Integration of
F. nucleatum
into multispecies commensal communities was evident from the interdigitation of fusobacteria in coaggregates with
A. naeslundii
and
S. oralis
and from the improved growth of fusobacteria, which was dependent on the presence of
A. naeslundii
.
Publisher
American Society for Microbiology
Subject
Ecology,Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology,Food Science,Biotechnology
Cited by
65 articles.
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