A Study of the Variation in the Salivary Peptide Profiles of Young Healthy Adults Acquired Using MALDI-TOF MS

PLoS One. 2016 Jun 3;11(6):e0156707. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0156707. eCollection 2016.

Abstract

A cross-sectional observational study was conducted to evaluate the inter-individual variation in the MALDI-TOF MS peptide profiles of unstimulated whole saliva in a population of 268 systemically healthy adults aged 18-30 yr (150 males and 118 females) with no apparent caries lesions or periodontal disease. Using Spectral Clustering, four subgroups of individuals were identified within the study population. These subgroups were delimited by the pattern of variation in 9 peaks detected in the 2-15 kDa m/z range. An Unsupervised Feature Selection algorithm showed that P-C peptide, a 44 residue-long salivary acidic proline-rich protein, and three of its fragments (Fr. 1-25, Fr. 15-35 and Fr. 15-44) play a central role in delimiting the subgroups. Significant differences were found in the salivary biochemistry of the subgroups with regard to lysozyme and chitinase, two enzymes that are part of the salivary innate defense system (p < 0.001). These results suggest that MALDI-TOF MS salivary peptide profiles may relate information on the underlying state of the oral ecosystem and may provide a useful reference for salivary disease biomarker discovery studies.

Publication types

  • Observational Study

MeSH terms

  • Adolescent
  • Adult
  • Algorithms
  • Biomarkers / chemistry
  • Chitinases / chemistry
  • Cluster Analysis
  • Cross-Sectional Studies
  • Female
  • Healthy Volunteers
  • Humans
  • Male
  • Muramidase / chemistry
  • Netherlands
  • Reference Values
  • Saliva / chemistry*
  • Salivary Proteins and Peptides / chemistry*
  • Spectrometry, Mass, Matrix-Assisted Laser Desorption-Ionization*
  • Young Adult

Substances

  • Biomarkers
  • Salivary Proteins and Peptides
  • Chitinases
  • Muramidase

Grants and funding

The project was funded by TI Food and Nutrition, a public-private partnership on precompetitive research in food and nutrition. The public partners were responsible for the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, and preparation of the manuscript. The private partners contributed to the project through regular discussion. The funder provided support in the form of salaries for authors A. Prodan, WC and BK, but did not have any additional role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. The specific roles of these authors are articulated in the ‘author contributions’ section. http://www.tifn.nl/