September 30, 2005
Several laboratory and animal studies have demonstrated that the oral bacterium Porphyromonas gingivalis can colonize cells in the coronary artery and produce structural and immunologic changes associated with early heart disease. With the arrival of cDNA microarrays to catalogue global changes in gene expression within an oral pathogen, it is now possible to take another critical research step: Record the various genes that P. gingivalis turns on and off while invading the endothelial cells that line the inside of the human coronary artery, information that will help to more clearly define the infectious process. In the September issue of the journal Infection and Immunity, NIDCR grantees provide the first global gene expression profile of P. gingivalis as it enters coronary artery endothelial cells. The scientists report that 62 genes were differentially regulated, and they confirmed their results with real-time PCR assay.