Similarity of salivary microbiome in parents and adult children

Kati Sundström; Pashupati P Mishra; Mikko J Pyysalo; Terho Lehtimäki; Pekka J Karhunen; Tanja Pessi

doi:10.7717/peerj.8799

Similarity of salivary microbiome in parents and adult children

PeerJ. 2020 Apr 9:8:e8799. doi: 10.7717/peerj.8799. eCollection 2020.

Authors

Kati Sundström^{1

2

3

4}, Pashupati P Mishra^{2

3

4}, Mikko J Pyysalo^{5

6

7

8}, Terho Lehtimäki^{2

3

4}, Pekka J Karhunen^{1

2

3

4}, Tanja Pessi^{1

8

9}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Forensic Medicine, Faculty of Medicine and Life Sciences, University of Tampere, Tampere, Finland.
² Department of Clinical Chemistry, Faculty of Medicine and Health Technology, Tampere University, Tampere, Finland.
³ Finnish Cardiovascular Research Center-Tampere, Faculty of Medicine and Health Technology, Tampere University, Tampere, Finland.
⁴ Department of Clinical Chemistry, Fimlab Laboratories Ltd, Tampere, Finland.
⁵ Department of Otorhinolaryngology, Faculty of Medicine and Health Technology, Tampere University, Tampere, Finland.
⁶ Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Diseases, Tampere University Hospital, Tampere, Finland.
⁷ Oral Health Services, City of Tampere, Tampere, Finland.
⁸ Department of Molecule Microbiology, Faculty of Medicine and Health Technology, Tampere University, Tampere, Finland.
⁹ Science Centre, Tampere, Finland.

Abstract

Background: Human saliva contains approximately 700 bacterial species. It has been reported that the salivary microbiome of a large family of closely related individuals consisting of multiple households is similar but the relatedness of salivary bacteria between generations of parents and their children has not yet been investigated. The objectives were to investigate the entirety of salivary bacterial DNA profiles and whether and how families share these profiles and also compare these communities between grandparents and their first daughter generations (F1) using 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing.

Results: The most abundant phyla in two separate families were Firmicutes, Bacteroidetes, Proteobacteria, Fusobacteria and Actinobacteria. Family ties explained 13% of the variance between individuals' bacterial communities (R ² = 0.13; P = 0.001). Mothers shared more OTUs with adult children compared to fathers, but this linkage seemed to be weaker in the nuclear family with older adult children. We identified 29 differentially abundant genus level OTUs (FDR < 0.05) between families, which accounted for 31% of the total identified genus level OTUs.

Conclusions: Our results indicate that adult family members share bacterial communities and adult children were more similar to mothers than fathers. The observed similarity in oral microbiome between parent-child pairs seemed to weaken over time. We suggest that our analysis approach is suitable for relatedness study of multigenerational salivary bacteria microbiome.

Keywords: 16S rRNA gene; Metagenomics; Microbiota; Next generation sequencing; Saliva; Similarity.

Grants and funding

This work was supported by Jane and Aatos Erkko Foundation, Finnish Clinical Chemistry Foundation, State research funding for Tampere University Hospital Region, Pirkanmaa Regional Fund, Terveyden Tutkimuksen Toimikunta (No. 286284), Finnish Foundation for Cardiovascular Research, Yrjö Jahnsson Foundation, Tampereen Tuberkuloosisäätiö, EU Horizon 2020 Framework Programme (NO. 755320 and Aition grant 8484146), Finnish Academy grant no 322098, Signe and Ane Gyllenberg Foundation, Diabetestutkimussäätiö, Swedish Cultural Foundation in Finland, Päivikki and Sakari Sohlberg Foundation, Laboratoriolääketieteen edistämissäätiö. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.