Popis: |
BackgroundTreponema species as commensals of the human microbiome have a prevalence and function depending on the studied niche. In the oral cavity, treponemes are ubiquitous while they have been strictly linked to rural and ancestral populations in the gastro-intestinal tract and are undetected in urban populations. In this study, an in silico analysis of 1481 metagenomes, selected based on the previous detection of treponemes in such sample types, was conducted to predict putative bacterial antagonists of treponemes, i.e. bacteria present when treponemes are lacking and vice versa. Predicted antagonists were subsequently tested in-vitro against Treponema denticola CSUR P7640.ResultsMost frequent predicted antagonists included members of the Bifidobacteriaceae family (23.3%) among which Bifidobacterium longum was the most significant (63.3% in T- group, p Bacteroides (6.7%) and Streptococcus (13.3%) genera. The relative abundance of the aforementioned taxa was also anticorrelated with that of the Treponema genus in the metagenomes analyzed in this study. B. longum CSUR P7400, Bifidobacterium bifidum CSUR P1194, Bifidobacterium breve CSUR P7882, Bacteroides ovatus CSUR P4577, Bacteroides uniformis CSUR P2248 and Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron CSUR P7324 were able to inhibit the growth of T. denticola with B. longum being the most efficient.ConclusionsThese results highlight an antagonism between Bifidobacterium species, known probiotics and bio-preservatives, and Treponema spp. This may help to explain the variation of Treponema prevalence in high-income countries and middle- and low-income countries which might linked to the differential consumption of fermented dairy foodstuff and processed food and therefore to the phenomenon of nutrition transition. |