Oral dental plaque bacterium Raw sequence reads
Severe early childhood caries is a prevalent disease that affects children physical and mental health. Microorganisms are considered as the main cause of caries, but the severe early childhood caries microbiome remains largely unknown, with about a quarter of them uncultivated. To explore the severe early childhood caries microbiota, we designed a new bacterial medium, nutrient-enriched microbiological medium, and compared it with SHI medium, a reference medium, in terms of bacterial growth, diversity, and function. We collected 11 fresh severe early childhood caries dental plaque samples and cultured them in both media under aerobic and anaerobic conditions for different time points. We then performed high throughput 16S rRNA sequencing and culturomics to analyze the bacterial communities and identify the bacterial species. Our results showed that nutrient enriched microbiological medium supported more living bacteria, abundant bacteria species, uncultured bacteria, and carbohydrate transport and metabolism capacities than SHI medium. We also observed dynamic changes in bacterial community composition over time, indicating that some bacteria tended to be enriched at specific time points. Our study developed a new medium that could support severe early childhood caries microbiota growth with more living, abundant bacteria species and uncultured bacteria to be conducive to obtain bacterial clinical isolates via culturomics technology. We believe that our work will contribute to the understanding and prevention of severe early childhood caries and other oral diseases.