Differences Between Inner Clear Aligner Biofilms and Contacting Enamel Plaque
This cross-sectional PacBio full-length 16S rRNA gene sequencing study compared supragingival biofilm microbiota across three groups of adult female subjects: inner clear aligner biofilms (Group A), contacting enamel plaque of aligner wearers (Group AT), and supragingival plaque of non-orthodontic control individuals (Group C).In this study, the patients in Group C were identical to those in our previous study, whereas the patients in the aligner treatment (Group AT) represented a subset of that earlier cohort. Specifically, the control participants were drawn directly from our previously published cohort, and the AT group comprised a selected subset of the same cohort, chosen on the basis of their subsequent eligibility for clear aligner therapy.Raw full-length 16S sequencing reads of both Group C and Group AT samples were previously deposited in NCBI SRA under BioProject accession PRJNA1064555 (SUB14138229, submitted Jan 06 2024), and duplicate upload of these sequencing files is excluded from this submission. Only newly generated sequencing data for paired Group A inner aligner biofilm samples are submitted here.Results revealed that enamel plaque microbiota of clear aligner users was highly similar to control enamel microbiota. In contrast, biofilms on the inner surface of thermoplastic aligners exhibited significantly lower community evenness, distinct taxonomic composition, higher proportions of facultatively anaerobic and Gram-positive microbes, and divergent functional characteristics, indicating selective bacterial adhesion to aligner materials. This dataset provides a resource for investigating oral microbiome ecology associated with removable clear orthodontic appliances.