Genetic variants of dental plaque Methanobrevibacter oralis

Methanobrevibacter oralis is the major methanogenic archaea found in the oral cavity. It has been implicated in periodontitis, including the severe form. It is unknown whether certain M. oralis genetic variants are associated with severe periodontitis. Here, we developed multispacer sequence typing (MST) as a sequencing-based genotyping method for the assessment of M. oralis. The sequencing of four intergenic spacers from a collection of 17 dental plaque M. oralis isolates obtained from seven individuals revealed 482 genetic polymorphisms, including 401 single nucleotide polymorphisms (83.2 %), 55 deletions (11.4 %) and 26 insertions (5.4 %). Concatenation of the four spacers yielded nine genotypes, which were clustered into six groups with an index of discrimination of 0.919. One periodontitis patient may have harboured up to three genetic variants of M. oralis, revealing the previously unknown diversity of this archaea. MST will allow for the study of the dynamics of M. oralis populations, including inter-individual transmission and any correlations with the severity of periodontitis.