Researchers have identified 41 master regulator genes that may cause periodontal (gum) disease and recently published their findings in the Journal of Dental Research.
This is the first study to employ genome-wide reverse engineering to identify the gene pathways that contribute to periodontitis—unlike gene expression studies in which investigators find those genes that are most commonly expressed in either healthy or diseased tissue. But such studies cannot identify a causal link between these genes and the disease, and often miss genes that affect a larger number of genetic pathways, which may have a significant impact on the disease process.
To identify the genes, a team led by Professor Panos Papapanou from the College of Dental Medicine at Columbia University Medical Center examined RNA from healthy and diseased gum tissues of 120 patients with periodontitis. They applied one algorithm to study the interactions among the genes, and used another algorithm to identify genes that disrupt healthy tissue and drive the disease process.
“Our approach narrows down the list of potentially interesting regulatory genes involved in periodontitis,” said Professor Papapanou. “This allows us to focus on the handful of genes that represent the most important players in the process rather than the whole transcriptome.”
Many of the genes identified by the researchers are implicated in immune and inflammatory pathways, confirming laboratory and clinical observations of the development of periodontal disease.
Identification of the genes represents a vital step toward developing compounds that can be used in targeted, individualised treatment of severe periodontitis, before loss of teeth and supportive bone occurs.
