Clusters of bacteria and fungi seem to be capable of complex movement, setting tooth decay in motion
Most of us would rather not think about the cavity-causing microbes infesting our mouths. They coat our teeth, eat the same sugars we do and excrete acids that carve holes in our enamel. And the complete picture is even grosser.
“The knowledge in the past was that it was just bacteria accumulating one by one and causing cavities,” says study co-author Hyun Koo, a microbiologist and dentist at the University of Pennsylvania. His team collected saliva samples from toddlers with severe tooth decay and found natural assemblages of Streptococcus mutans bacteria and Candida albicans fungi, which weren’t present in saliva from children with healthier teeth.
Microbes in the mouth “are like a community trying to expand their territory,” gaining new land and sugary resources, says Zhi Ren, a postdoctoral fellow in Koo’s laboratory and co-lead author on the study. The team found that bacterial-fungal partnerships grew faster and were more resistant to removal by mechanical force or antimicrobial chemicals than fungi or bacteria alone.
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