Patterns of Oral Microbiota Diversity in Adults and Children: A Crowdsourced Population Study

The oral microbiome is a diverse collection of over 600 bacterial species with many of these being shared across individuals. Oral microbiome composition has been shown to be associated with age, oral health, diet, and geography, although, data resembling the natural variation found in the general public is still lacking. In this study, a citizen-scientist model was used to obtain crowdsourced bacterial composition data from guests at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science to explore previously published oral microbiome interactions within a variable, general population. We found bacterial composition to be more diverse in youth microbiomes when compared to adults. Adult oral microbiomes were predominantly impacted by oral health habits, while youth microbiomes were impacted by sex and weight status. The oral pathogen Treponema was detected more commonly in adults without recent dentist visits and in obese youth. Additionally, oral microbiomes from members of the same family were more similar to each other than to oral microbiomes from non-related individuals. These results show that previously reported oral microbiome associations are observable in a population containing the natural variation commonly found in the general public. Furthermore, these results support the use of crowdsourced data as a valid methodology to obtain population-based microbiome data and provide evidence that these associations are generalizable across populations.