Assessing saliva microbiome collection and processing methods

The oral microbiome has been connected with lung health and may be of significance in the progression of SARS-CoV-2 infection. Saliva-based SARS-CoV-2 tests provide the opportunity to leverage stored samples for assessing the oral microbiome. However, these collection kits have not been tested for their accuracy in measuring the oral microbiome. Saliva is highly enriched with human DNA and reducing it prior to shotgun sequencing may increase the depth of bacterial reads. We examined both the effect of saliva collection method and sequence processing on measurement of microbiome depth and diversity by 16S rRNA gene amplicon and shotgun metagenomics. We collected 56 samples from 22 subjects. Each subject provided saliva samples with and without preservative, and a subset provided a second set of samples the following day. 16S rRNA gene (V4) sequencing was performed on all samples, and shotgun metagenomics was performed on a subset of samples collected with preservative with and without human DNA depletion before sequencing. We observed that the beta diversity distances within subjects over time was smaller than between unrelated subjects, and distances within subjects were smaller in samples collected with preservative. Samples collected with preservative had higher alpha diversity measuring both richness and evenness. Human DNA depletion before extraction and shotgun sequencing yielded higher total and relative reads mapping to bacterial sequences. We conclude that collecting saliva with preservative may provide more consistent measures of the oral microbiome and depleting human DNA increases yield of bacterial sequences.

Automated summary

The oral microbiome is connected with lung health and may play a role in the progression of SARS-CoV-2 infection. Saliva-based tests for SARS-CoV-2 can be used to assess the oral microbiome, but collection kits have not been tested for accuracy. Collecting saliva with a preservative and depleting human DNA before sequencing can lead to more consistent measures of the oral microbiome and increased abundance of bacterial sequences. Additionally, the study found that the distance of microbiome composition was smaller within subjects over time compared to between unrelated subjects.