Preliminary study on the discrimination of putative periodontal pathogens with a metabonomics method

Objective To evaluate the feasibility of identifying oral pathogenic bacteria by comparing the metabolic profiling of putative periodontal pathogens and try to find a convenient and rapid way to discriminate oral microor-ganisms. Methods Suspensions of Porphyromonas gingivalis,Prevotella intermedia and Fusobacterium nucleatum with same density were prepared and cultured respectively at liquid BHI medium. Then the growth quantity was measured periodically through turbidimetry and the growth curves of the inoculated bacteria were completed. The culture solutions of stable growth phase were sampled and characterized by 1H-nuclear magnetic resonance(1H-NMR). The data of 1H-NMR spectroscope results were analyzed by principal components analysis(PCA). Results The PCA showed the obvious clustering phenomena and the points of three groups differentially centralized to three clusters. Therefore,the NMRbased metabonomics profiles could discriminate the three different kinds of bacteria. Conclusion The metabonomics is a potential classable method to identify the oral pathogenic bacteria.