Chenggang Wu, PhD

Education

Postdoctoral Fellow

The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston

Research Fellow

University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center

Ph.D.

Institute of Microbiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China, 2007

Areas of Interest

Research Interests

Cell-cell contact mechanism and communication among oral bacteria in dental plaque formation

Fusobacterium nucleatum is an oral pathobiont not only associated with periodontitis, but also with extra-oral disease such as preterm birth and colorectal cancer. Our current study is focused on understanding the regulations that control F. nucleatum-mediated coaggregation. Coaggregation is the formation of aggregates caused by cell-to-cell recognition of genetically distinct bacteria via the interactions between adhesins and their cognate complementary receptors; it is an important driving force for multispecies biofilm formation in nature. F. nucleatum is a prominent colonizer in dental plaque and has an outstanding coaggregation ability. F. nucleatum exhibits coaggregation with nearly all tested oral bacteria. Because of this, F. nucleatum has been proposed as a bridge microorganism in dental plaque by virtue of its coaggregation with early and late colonizers. In the past decades, intensive work has been done to find which bacteria can aggregate with F. nucleatum and which adhesins in F. nucleatum are responsible for their coaggregation. Studies of coaggregation have so far yielded four fusobacterial adhesins: FomA, Fap2, CmpA and RadD.  Of these, FomA and Fap2 bind Porphyromonas gingivalis, CmpA binds a specific Streptococcus strain, and RadD, a versatile adhesin, mediates fusobacterial aggregation with many early and late colonizers, including Aggregatibacter actinomycetemcomitans. Vital for plaque development, this RadD-mediated coaggregation process is an excellent experimental model for studying various cell-cell interactions within dental plaque. Theoretically, expression of adhesins in F. nucleatum should be tightly regulated since increasing surface adhesins promotes oral biofilm formation; however, reducing their levels results in bacterial dispersal, which changes the diversity and composition of dynamic dental plaque and probably shifts a health-associated plaque to a pathogenic one. Little is known about the regulatory mechanisms underlying the multispecies interactions involving F. nucleatum. We use a multidisciplinary approach including genetic, biochemical methods, mass spectrometry, fluorescence confocal microscopy, and electron microscopy to pursue the following questions related to RadD-mediated coaggregation.

Please visit Dr. Wu’s Lab Page for more information.

Publications

Visit the PubMed profile page