Data from: Metatranscriptomics of the human oral microbiome during health and disease

The human microbiome plays important roles in health, but when disrupted
these same indigenous microbes can cause disease. The composition of the
microbiome changes during the transition from health to disease; however,
these changes are often not conserved among patients. Since
microbiome-associated diseases like periodontitis cause similar patient
symptoms despite inter-patient variability in microbial community
composition, we hypothesized that human-associated microbial communities
undergo conserved changes in metabolism during disease. Here we used
patient-matched healthy and diseased samples to compare gene expression of
160,000 genes in healthy and diseased periodontal communities. We show
that healthy and diseased communities exhibit defined differences in
metabolism that are conserved between patients. In contrast, individual
species metabolic gene expression was highly variable between patients.
These results demonstrate that despite high inter-patient variability in
microbial composition, diseased communities display conserved metabolic
profiles that are generally accomplished by a patient-specific cohort of
microbes.