By Rodrigo Pérez Ortega Microbes are everywhere in our guts—and in our mouths. Now, a new study reveals our tongue-dwelling companions aren’t all mixed together randomly; instead, they seem to prefer living close to their own kind, separating out into distinct groups based on their species.Researchers started by scraping the tongues of 21 healthy human volunteers.
Then, they used fluorescent tags to identify specific groups of bacteria, some of which produce nutrients for us, so they could see exactly where each one lived on the tongue’s surface.
Without exception, the bacteria formed tight-knit, well-defined clusters of the same species, the researchers report today in Cell Reports.The clusters (above) resemble a microbial rainbow under
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