16S rRNA data for an in vitro model of the human dental plaque bacterial community (3 hosts)

The creation of oral microcosms with reproducible composition is important for developing model systems of the oral microbiome. Here, we report on the outcome of a methodologically simple but scientifically informative approach, in which we sample the dental plaque microbiome from 3 individuals and characterize the variability among the microbiomes after storage and subsequent propagation. We use 24-well culture plates with artificially generated pellicle under a defined anaerobic atmosphere and an undefined medium supplemented by nutrients for fastidious organisms to generate the cultures, including the initial, preserved, and propagated cultures. Harvested cultures are extracted with the Qiagen PowerSoil kit. Culture composition is determined by 16S rRNA sequencing on the Illumina MiSeq platform and the mothur pipeline. Data analysis is performed in R with the phyloseq, and vegan. Our results show that cultures from 2 out of 3 individuals cluster into an ‘attractor’ compositional type...