The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of the different components of salivary proteins on the formation of the acquired dental pellicle adsorbed onto the acid-etched enamel surface. We tried to establish a simple and convenient procedure for collecting respectively the 2-hour acquired dental pellicle from several subjects, and to obtain suitable amounts of the sample for the amino acid analysis of the 2-hour acquired pellicle.
The results obtained were as follows:
1. A suitable amount of samples was obtained by scraping with a scaler from the surface of 10 etched -enamel blocks (65×10×2mm), which were exposed for 2 hr to 6 ml of the supernatant of the centrifuged saliva.
2. Comparison of amino acid analyses between whole saliva and 2-hr pellicle of the same subject, confirmed rather consistent amino acid composition of 2-hr pellicle obtained from different subjects having different amino acid composition of the whole saliva.
3. The results of amino acid analyses of 14 subjects indicated that the 2-hr pellicle samples obtained from 12 respective subjects were rich in glycine, glutamic acid and proline, while the samples obtained from 2 other subjects were richer in serine than in proline.