What is it about?
Glycerol, or glycerin, is commonly used by food, dental, cosmetic and pharmaceutical industries and often at high concentrations. This, and the fact that glycerol is a natural product of many oral microbes including bacteria and yeast, make it readily available to bacteria of dental plaque. The conventional understanding however, is that oral streptococci generally do not ferment glycerol. Our study showed that glycerol is not only utilized by many oral streptococci, a group of abundant bacteria important to the health of dental plaque, the process releases substantial amounts of hydrogen peroxide, a potent antibacterial compound proven effective against dental pathogens.
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Why is it important?
There has been a myth claiming that glycerol contributes to tooth decay. Our work revealed instead the potential of glycerol to boost hydrogen peroxide production which inhibits the main dental pathogen, Streptococcus mutans that contributes to caries development.
Perspectives
Just because a bacterium does not grow on a carbon source does not necessarily mean that it cannot metabolize it. Oral streptococci are a group of highly specialized bacteria that ferment many carbohydrates for growth and energy production. The ability to utilize glycerol for release of hydrogen peroxide appears widely conserved among streptococci that make up the bulk of the pioneer colonizers of the oral cavity, but not in pathogen S. mutans, making glycerol a highly promising substance for development of effective prebiotic strategies aimed at boosting dental health.
Dr Lin Zeng
University of Florida
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Glycerol metabolism contributes to competition by oral streptococci through production of hydrogen peroxide, Journal of Bacteriology, September 2024, ASM Journals,
DOI: 10.1128/jb.00227-24.
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