Genomics of oral bacteria.

Margaret J Duncan

Journal: Critical reviews in oral biology and medicine : an official publication of the American Association of Oral Biologists 2003;14(3):175-87

PMID: 12799321

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Abstract

Advances in bacterial genetics came with the discovery of the genetic code, followed by the development of recombinant DNA technologies. Now the field is undergoing a new revolution because of investigators' ability to sequence and assemble complete bacterial genomes. Over 200 genome projects have been completed or are in progress, and the oral microbiology research community has benefited through projects for oral bacteria and their non-oral-pathogen relatives. This review describes features of several oral bacterial genomes, and emphasizes the themes of species relationships, comparative genomics, and lateral gene transfer. Genomics is having a broad impact on basic research in microbial pathogenesis, and will lead to new approaches in clinical research and therapeutics. The oral microbiota is a unique community especially suited for new challenges to sequence the metagenomes of microbial consortia, and the genomes of uncultivable bacteria.

Address: Department of Molecular Genetics, The Forsyth Institute, 140 Fenway, Boston, MA 02115, USA. [email protected]

DOI: 10.1177/154411130301400303

MeSH Terms: Aggregatibacter actinomycetemcomitans, Amino Acid Sequence, Bacteria, Anaerobic, Conserved Sequence, DNA, Bacterial, Fusobacterium nucleatum, Gene Transfer, Horizontal, Genome, Bacterial, Genomics, Gram-Negative Bacteria, Molecular Sequence Data, Mouth, Porphyromonas gingivalis, Prevotella intermedia, Sequence Analysis, DNA, Sequence Homology, Nucleic Acid, Streptococcus mutans, Treponema, Virulence Factors