Analysis of oral microbiome from fossil human remains revealed the significant differences in virulence factors of modern and ancient Tannerella forsythia.
Abstract
Recent advances in the next-generation sequencing (NGS) allowed the metagenomic analyses of DNA from many different environments and sources, including thousands of years old skeletal remains. It has been shown that most of the DNA extracted from ancient samples is microbial. There are several reports demonstrating that the considerable fraction of extracted DNA belonged to the bacteria accompanying the studied individuals before their death. In this study we scanned 344 microbiomes from 1000- and 2000- year-old human teeth. The datasets originated from our previous studies on human ancient DNA (aDNA) and on microbial DNA accompanying human remains. We previously noticed that in many samples infection-related species have been identified, among them Tannerella forsythia, one of the most prevalent oral human pathogens. Samples containing sufficient amount of T. forsythia aDNA for a complete genome assembly were selected for thorough analyses. We confirmed that the T. forsythia-containing samples have higher amounts of the periodontitis-associated species than the control samples. Despites, other pathogens-derived aDNA was found in the tested samples it was too fragmented and damaged to allow any reasonable reconstruction of thes...Continue Reading
References
Proteolytic inactivation of LL-37 by karilysin, a novel virulence mechanism of Tannerella forsythia.
A Metalloproteinase Mirolysin of Tannerella forsythia Inhibits All Pathways of the Complement System
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