Watch Your Mouth

It’s not easy, living in a mouth. Aside from the constant threat of chomping, or being washed away with a meal, the skin cells available to cling to are constantly shed and replaced. Despite this, the thriving bacterial communities in our mouths rival those in our guts – and this Conchiformibius steedae bacterium may hold clues to why. Unlike many rod-shaped bacteria its cells divide longitudinally (splitting lengthways like a chopped log) and remain stuck together after division forming multicellular filaments. Here, differently-coloured fluorescent stains highlight spines between cells in the overall structure – which can grow to the size of small caterpillars. C. steedae’s cells work together – researchers believe this is key to how they adapt to the harsh oral environment. They may make fascinating model organisms to design and test new antimicrobial drugs – and they’re easily found, around half of us may have C. steedae in our mouths.

Written by John Ankers

John Ankers

Writer

A former researcher in systems biology, John is now an online biology tutor and professional coach supporting the wellbeing of scientists and NHS professionals. He's writing, too, of course.

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• Image from work by Sammy Nyongesa and Philipp M. Weber, and colleagues
• Department of Functional and Evolutionary Ecology, Environmental Cell Biology Group, University of Vienna, Vienna, Vienna, Austria & INRS-Centre Armand-Frappier Santé Biotechnologie, Bacterial Symbionts Evolution, Laval, QC, Canada
• Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
• Published in Nature Communications, August 2022