Beverly Michelle Lee-Scott, Chaudhary Prem Prashant, Dabdoub Shareef Majid, Kim Shinae, Chatzakis Emmanouli, Williamson Kathryn, Ganesan Sukirth Murthy, Yadav Manoj, Ratley Grace, D'Souza Brandon N, Myles Ian A, Kumar Purnima S
Department of Periodontics and Oral Medicine, School of Dentistry, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA.
Epithelial Therapeutics Unit, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Laboratory of Clinical Immunology and Microbiology, IH, Bethesda, MD, USA.
NPJ Biofilms Microbiomes. 2025 Apr 26;11(1):66. doi: 10.1038/s41522-025-00709-7.
We tested the hypothesis that e-cigarette aerosol is metabolized by the indigenous oral microbiome, leading to structural and functional alterations. We combined untargeted metabolomics of in vitro commensal-rich and pathogen-rich biofilms with metatranscriptomics and fluorescent microscopy and verified the results in human samples. Spectral deconvolution of 4215 peaks identified 969 exposomal and endogenous metabolites that mapped to 23 metabolic pathways. The metabolites clustered by both aerosol characteristics and biofilm composition; and several were verified in human saliva of vapers. E-cigarette exposure upregulated xenobiotic degradation, capsule, peptidoglycan biosynthesis, organic carbon-compound metabolism, antimicrobial resistance, and secretion systems. E-cigarette exposure also altered biofilm architecture characterized by low surface-area to biovolume ratio, high biomass, and diffusion distance. In conclusion, our data suggest that bacterial metabolism of e-cigarette aerosol triggers a quorum-sensing-regulated stress response which mediates the formation of dense, exopolysaccharide-rich biofilms in health-compatible communities and antibiotic resistance and virulence amplification in disease-associated communities.
电子烟气溶胶可被口腔内的原生微生物群代谢，从而导致结构和功能上的改变。我们将富含共生菌和富含病原体的体外生物膜的非靶向代谢组学与宏转录组学及荧光显微镜技术相结合，并在人类样本中验证了结果。对4215个峰进行光谱去卷积分析，确定了969种外暴露组和内源性代谢物，这些代谢物映射到23条代谢途径。代谢物按气溶胶特征和生物膜组成进行聚类；其中几种在电子烟使用者的唾液中得到了验证。电子烟暴露上调了异生物质降解、荚膜、肽聚糖生物合成、有机碳化合物代谢、抗微生物耐药性和分泌系统。电子烟暴露还改变了生物膜结构，其特征为低表面积与生物体积比、高生物量和扩散距离。总之，我们的数据表明，电子烟气溶胶的细菌代谢引发了群体感应调节的应激反应，这种反应在健康相关群落中介导了致密的、富含胞外多糖的生物膜的形成，在疾病相关群落中导致了抗生素耐药性和毒力增强。
