SAY goodbye to cavities, and hello to mouthwash crawling with genetically modified bacteria.
Most cavities are caused by Streptococcus mutans, bacteria that stick to teeth and spew out lactic acid. To prevent this, Lennart Hammarström’s team from the Huddinge Hospital near Stockholm modified a common dairy bacterium, Lactobacillus zeae, to create antibodies that would stop S. mutans from adhering to teeth in the first place. Swilling your mouth with a concoction of GM L. zeae once a week should do the trick, they say. In trials with rats, this dramatically reduced tooth decay (Nature Biotechnology, vol 20, p 702).…
