The ecosystem that is your mouth! The Human Oral Microbiome by Floyd Dewhirst, Harvard University

"The human oral cavity is a diverse habitat that contains approximately bacterial 600 predominant species. The oral microbiome is comprised of 44% named species, 12% isolates representing unnamed species, and 44% phylotypes known only from 16S rRNA based cloning studies. Species from 11 phyla have been identified: Firmicutes (211), Bacteroidetes (106), Proteobacteria (99), Actinobacteria (64), Spirochaetes (49), Fusobacteria (29), TM7 (12), Synergistetes (10), Chlamydiae (1), Chloroflexi (1) and SR1(1). Full and survey sequences have been obtained for over 30 oral species, and in the course of the Human Microbiome Project over 300 essentially complete genome sequences should be determined. An Oral Microbiome Project is in progress and data from this project should be available soon. The talk will discuss the diversity of the oral microbiome, the Human Oral Microbiome Database (a resource for exploring the Oral Microbiome), and efforts to connect the oral metagenome with the oral metaproteomics and structural metagenomics."