Biogeography of microbial communities inhabiting the human oral cavity
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- This thesis is concerned with understanding the biogeography of the human oral microbiota, defining the types and extent of spatial patterns observed in the communities of the oral cavity, as well as the underlying causal mechanisms governing those patterns. First, I provide an overview of spatial ecology and, in a review, discuss how applying the context, principles and methods of spatial ecology to the study of the human microbiota will enable us as a field to move beyond the descriptive statistics that have dominated our biogeographic surveys since the time of Leeuwenhoek (Chapter 1). Second, I review extant literature surveying the biogeography of the human microbiome, of all major body site habitats, providing a critical review that yields insight into the limitations of existing biogeographic surveys (Chapter 2). Third, I identify an ecological gradient that structures the microbial communities that inhabit the exposed surfaces of teeth and which runs between the front of the mouth and its back (Chapter 3). This is the first demonstration of an ecological gradient, that is not a successional gradient, in the human oral cavity, a departure from previous reports that communities are categorically distinct from one another, varying simply by tooth number or tooth class. Fourth, I demonstrate that the anterior to posterior ecological gradient observed for supragingival communities is shared by communities inhabiting multiple tissues, including the alveolar mucosa, keratinized gingiva, and buccal mucosa, highlighting the importance of examining multiple spatial scales in studies of the human microbiota (Chapter 4). Fifth, I tested the hypothesis that reduced salivary flow homogenizes the observed spatial structure of microbial communities (Chapter 5). This is the first demonstration that, in healthy humans, salivary flow mechanistically drives the segregation of human oral microbial communities, maintaining the spatial architecture of bacterial communities across teeth in healthy humans. Taken together, these studies provide novel insight into the biogeography of the human oral microbiota, and how it pertains to human health and disease.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic; electronic resource; remote |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Publication date | 2016 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Associated with | Proctor, Diana Marie |
|---|---|
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of Microbiology and Immunology. |
| Primary advisor | Relman, David A |
| Thesis advisor | Relman, David A |
| Thesis advisor | Amieva, Manuel |
| Thesis advisor | Loomer, Peter M, 1962- |
| Thesis advisor | Monack, Denise M |
| Advisor | Amieva, Manuel |
| Advisor | Loomer, Peter M, 1962- |
| Advisor | Monack, Denise M |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Diana Marie Proctor. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of Microbiology and Immunology. |
| Thesis | Thesis (Ph.D.)--Stanford University, 2016. |
| Location | electronic resource |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2016 by Dinah Marie Proctor
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
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