Significant taxonomic differences in the oral metagenome between healthy children and children with caries. (A) Beta diversity. Biplot generated using DEICODE (robust Aitchison PCA) (Martino et al. 2019). Data points represent individual subjects and are colored with a gradient to visualize DMFT score, indicating severity of dental caries. Feature loadings (i.e., taxa driving differences in ordination space) are illustrated by the vectors, which are labeled with the cognate species name. (B) Ranking of PCA Axis 2 taxonomic loadings. Qurro-produced bar chart illustrating the sorted ranks of the feature loadings of PCA Axis 2 from A, corresponding to the main PCA space separation between the healthy and caries groups. The indicated taxa are highlighted in the indicated color. (C) Differential rankings of taxa associated with disease status. Qurro-produced bar chart illustrating the sorted differential rankings of taxa associated with disease status determined by Songbird (Morton et al. 2019b). The indicated taxa are highlighted in the indicated color. (D) The log ratios of Prevotella spp. to Rothia, Haemophilus, and Neisseria spp. are significantly increased in caries. Bar chart illustrating the log2 ratios of Prevotella spp. to Rothia, Haemophilus, and Neisseria spp. across the healthy and caries sample groups. (**) Statistical significance based on a Welch's t-test (P = 0.001).
