SKIRMISHER

I can’t believe this. A new strain of mouth bacterium could actually make eating sweets “protective” of our teeth.

Under normal circumstances, the bacteria called Streptococcus mutans is what’s to blame for dental cavities; it’s found in the human mouth, lives there and multiplies like horny rabbits, and converts the sugar we eat into lactic acid. This acid is what eats into our teeth’s enamel. The result: billions of imperfect little smiles.

But Jeffrey Hillman of Oragenics engineered a strain of S. mutans so that instead of lactic acid, the new strain “carries an antibiotic that helps it displace the indigenous cavity-inducing strain.”

The irony is that with the new S. mutans, your dentist might soon be telling you to indulge in sweets to make your teeth stronger–sugar helps the new bacteria to colonize the mouth and do its work.

As luck would have it, Tootsie Rolls, lollipops, et al. help to colonize the new strain, but instead of creating a cavity the sugar helps form a tooth security guard, thus revolutionizing the practice of modern dentistry. “I think that’s a fair way to put it,” says Kenneth Burrell, senior director of the American Dental Association Council on Scientific Affairs.

Cool. I feel this is going to explode the global candy industry.

A BUGGY CAVITY FIX [PopSci]

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