Title

A proteomic approach for exploring biofilm in Streptococcus mutans

Authors

Asad Ullah Khan*, Barira Islam, Shahper N Khan, Mohammad Akram  

Affiliation

Interdisciplinary Biotechnology Unit, Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh-202002, India;

Email

asad.k@rediffmail.com; *Corresponding author

Article Type

Hypothesis

Date

Received February 07, 2011; Accepted February 11, 2011; Published February 15, 2011

Biofilm formation by Streptococcus mutans is considered as its principal virulence factor, causing dental caries. Mutants of S. mutans defective in biofilm formation were generated and analyzed to study the collective role of proteins in its formation. Mutants were characterized on the basis of adherence to saliva-coated surface, and biofilm formation. The confocal laser microscopy and scanning electron microscopy images showed that the control biofilms had cluster of cells covered by layer of exo-polysaccharide while the biofilms of mutants were thin and spaced. Two-dimensional protein electrophoresis data analysis identfied 57 proteins that are either up (44 proteins) or down (13 proteins) regulated. These data points to the importance of up and down regulated proteins in the formation of biofilm in Streptococcus mutans. 

Citation

Khan et al. Bioinformation 5(10): 440-445 (2011)

Edited by

P Kangueane

ISSN

0973-2063

Publisher

Biomedical Informatics

License

This is an Open Access article which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. This is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License.