Fig. 1: Mucins from different mucosal niches promote diverse oral microbial communities.

a Schematic of microbial communities embedded in networks of mucin glycoproteins. GalNAc: N-acetyl galactosamine; GlcNAc: N-acetyl glucosamine; Neu5ac: sialic acid. b Relative abundance from 16S rRNA sequencing of inoculating communities derived from pooled human saliva. Each stacked bar represents the average relative abundances including replicates from two inoculating communities (n = 4). c Taxonomic diversity (Shannon-Wiener Index) over time in glucose medium without mucins. Error bars indicate the standard error of the mean (s.e.m.) (n = 4). d Primary gel-forming mucin types isolated from human saliva (MUC5B), porcine gastric mucus (Muc5ac) and porcine intestinal mucus (Muc2) representative of mucosal niches across the human body. e, f Alpha (e) and beta (f) diversity of microbial communities cultured in medium with or without mucins (48 h, n = 4). In (e, f), center lines indicate the medians, box limits indicate upper and lower quartiles, and whiskers indicate minimum and maximum values. Each point represents an independent replicate. Significant differences relative to medium without mucin were assessed using repeated-measures one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) with Dunnett’s multiple comparison test. *p < 0.05; **p < 0.01. g Total growth measured by counting colony-forming units (CFUs) in glucose medium with or without mucins. Each point represents the average CFU/mL (n = 3), and error bars indicate the standard deviation (s.d.). h PCoA biplot of 16 S rRNA sequencing data showing community separation by culture environment (48 h, n = 4). Each point represents an independent replicate. Arrow magnitude reflects influence on overall discrimination, and the 5 most contributing individual taxa are represented. i–l Relative abundance of Streptococcus groups in glucose medium without (i) or with (j) MUC5B, (k) Muc5ac, or (l) Muc2. Each point represents the average relative abundance, and bars represent s.e.m. (n = 4). All experiments were performed using inoculating communities 1 and 2, as depicted in Supplementary Fig. 1. The schematic in (a) contains components (mucin polymers, bacteria) that are adapted with permission¹⁵, originally published in The FEBS Journal.