Site and Temporal Trends in Oral microbiota. Oral Microbiota Communities

Research on the oral microbiota generally evaluated the composition using whole saliva or pooled tooth scrapings. However many studies therefore lack niche specificity which may be disadvantage when the association between the microbiota and oral disease is searched, as the majority of the surfaces are healthy and non-representative for oral disease. Some research groups has undertaken the task to compare the microbiota profiles in whole saliva and tooth biofilms, however, limited studies have evaluated oral microbiota similarities and differences at different tooth regions and the effect of biofilm accumulation time. Here, we aimed to evaluate oral microbiota variations associated with individual variation, tooth biofilm versus saliva as sampling source, 16 tooth regions representing anterior versus posterior and maxillary versus mandibular positions, and 1-3 days of microbiota accumulation time.