Microbial life in the mouth
In this article in Microbiology Today (February 2008), Dave Spratt gives us an overview of the life in our mouths, which is more complex than we imagine:
The oral cavity forms the top section of the gastrointestinal tract and provides a large number of diverse surfaces on which a wide variety of complex biofilms is able to form. These surfaces include soft shedding tissues of the buccal mucosa, papillae and crypts of the tongue and hard non-shedding surfaces of the teeth. Dental plaque is the term commonly used for the biofilm formed on teeth; however, the term plaque has now been extended to encompass biofilms on all the oral surfaces. These biofilms consist of a complex microbial community embedded in a matrix of polymers of bacterial and salivary origin…
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Tags: Bacteria, Biology, Health, Medicine, Microbiology, Science
That’s a lovely picture.