This subproject is one of many research subprojects utilizing the resources provided by a Center grant funded by NIH/NCRR. The subproject and investigator (PI) may have received primary funding from another NIH source, and thus could be represented in other CRISP entries. The institution listed is for the Center, which is not necessarily the institution for the investigator. Oral bacteria have been implicated in endocarditis, aspiration pneumonia, osteomyelitis, preterm low birth weight and cerebral infarction. These microbes (approx. 500 species) survive in a hostile environment where every organism has its own antimicrobial defense mechanism for colonization against each other or against host defense exudates. Oral bacterial play a major role in oral hygiene by forming a layer of protection as biofilm, as well as causing pain, tooth-loss, morbidity and oral diseases. Periodontal disease is an infection due to the overgrowth of a finite number of specific oral bacterial. They are potential reservoirs for invasive pathogens, which seed infections elsewhere in the body, including cardiovascular diseases. Due to various defensive colonization processes operative within the oral entities, there may be various antibiotic metabolites of quite specialized functions that are produced by these oral bacterial in unusual pathways called non-ribosomal peptide synthesis (NRPS). Although they are structurally different, most of these peptides share a common mode of synthesis called multienzyme thiotemplate mechanism, facilitated by peptide synthetases. They contain conserved motifs and are considered to be blueprints for peptide (antibiotic) synthesis. In the proposed study, the genomic DNA of five periodontal/oral bacterial samples from the laboratory stock of the Center for Oral Health and Systemic Disease, University of Louisville, will be screened using peptide synthetase genomic probes. The proposed study uses no human subjects. As the result of this novel approach (i) the peptide synthetase producer bacteria can be identified and (ii) the NRPS-related peptide-antibiotic genes from these oral bacteria can be recognized. For the future, these results will help to establish a comparative analysis with other oral bacteria and will yield a foundation for further expansion of this project using samples from clinical patients of periodontally healthy and non-healthy human subjects.
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