Ecology and evolution of European oral microbes over the past three centuries

The oral cavity hosts a diverse set of microbiota, including pathogens involved in periodontal, genital, respiratory, cardiovascular and systemic disease. Microbes present in the mouth are intrinsically linked to our environment, be it the air we breathe, the food we eat or foster interactions. However, little is known as to how major players in the human oral microbiome have changed in response to modern city lifestyles and diets, nor how they influence our susceptibility to disease.

This project will address three major questions:

1.  What microbiota can be successfully sequenced from spirit-preserved oral and venereal pathology collections?
2.  How do sequenced historic pathogens compare in genomic diversity to microbes recovered from contemporary saliva?
3.  What processes have driven the short-term (within a human lifetime) and long-term (over generations) evolution of oral pathogen lineages in the human oral cavity? The pilot data generated, and outcomes of these objectives will inform on the appropriateness of the approach for larger-scale joint applications to catalogue the drivers of oral pathogen diversity over the past 1000 years.

The project will be split into three parts designed to address the above objectives. All parties will be engaged in the project through online meetings, student mentorship and outreach talks at partner museums.

Area

Genetics

UCL leads

• Dr Lucy van Dorp, UCL Genetics Institute