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Teo Jia Ling Tricia; Bench E; 31/08/2016

Classification

Higher order taxa

Bacteria – Bacteria – Firmicutes – Negativicutes – Selenomonadales – Veillonellaceae – Veillonella

Species

Veillonella parvula
Strain ATCC 10790

http://www.eol.org/data_objects/3602510

Description and significance

It is a non-motile, non-spore forming, anaerobic gram-negative coccus. It can grow in pairs or in chains and grow to about 0.3 to 0.5m in size (1).

It was first described by Veillon and Zuber in 1898 as “Staphylococcus parvulus” (2) before being renamed as Veillonella parvula by Prévot in 1933 (3) and early experiments were conducted on V. parvula oral isolates (4). It is commonly found in the human oral cavity, especially in subgingival dental plaque, gastrointestinal tract and vagina, as part of the microflora (1, 4, 5). It is involved in establishing early microbial colonies in dental plaque formation, along with Streptococcus and other species (6, 7) and can make up 10% of the early colonizing bacteria on the enamel (8). However, it can also be associated with dental and other infections (1)(9).

It plays an important role in microbial food chain by metabolizing end products of carbohydrate-fermenting bacteria, such as lactic acid bacteria, allowing it to symbiotically establish itself in anaerobic environments (10, 11). Despite its prevalence in the human body, studies on this bacterium has been extremely limited due to its difficulty in manipulation. Thus, it is still not well understood (12).

12 species have been described under the same genus (12), of which 6 species have been suggested to facilitate the development of oral biofilms (13). V. parvula is the most abundant in the human oral cavity and gastrointestinal tract (12).

Examples of citations [1], [2]

Genome structure

V. parvula is the only fully assembled genome in the Veillonella genus and comprises of 2,132,142 bp genome size circular chromosome, with 38.6% GC content. It encodes 1, 920 genes, of which 73.6% are functional, 61 RNAs and 1,859 proteins (1).

Cell structure and metabolism

Cell wall, biofilm formation, motility, metabolic functions.

Ecology

Aerobe/anaerobe, habitat (location in the oral cavity, potential other environments) and microbe/host interactions.

Pathology

Do these microorganisms cause disease in the oral cavity or elsewhere?

Application to biotechnology

Bioengineering, biotechnologically relevant enzyme/compound production, drug targets,…

Current research

Summarise some of the most recent discoveries regarding this species.

References

References examples

1. Sahm, K., MacGregor, B.J., Jørgensen, B.B., and Stahl, D.A. (1999) Sulphate reduction and vertical distribution of sulphate-reducing bacteria quantified by rRNA slotblot hybridization in a coastal marine sediment. Environ Microbiol 1: 65-74.

2. Human Oral Microbiome

This page is written by Tricia Teo for the MICR3004 course, Semester 2, 2016