The feline oral microbiome: a provisional 16S rRNA gene based taxonomy with full-length reference sequences.

The human oral microbiome is known to play a significant role in human health and disease. While less well studied, the feline oral microbiome is thought to play a similarly important role. To determine roles oral bacteria play in health and disease, one first has to be able to accurately identify bacterial species present.

The canine oral microbiome.

Determining the bacterial composition of the canine oral microbiome is of interest for two primary reasons. First, while the human oral microbiome has been well studied using molecular techniques, the oral microbiomes of other mammals have not been studied in equal depth using culture independent methods. This study allows a comparison of the number of bacterial taxa, based on 16S rRNA-gene sequence comparison, shared between humans and dogs, two divergent mammalian species.