What a Bronze Age Skeleton Reveals About Cavities
28th April 2024
Cassidy and colleagues used the ancient man’s molars to reconstruct the first ancient genome for S. mutans. The new data, analyzed in conjunction with modern genomes, allowed them to build a picture of the evolution of the bacteria across millennia for the first time. Previous work with modern oral microbiome genomes suggested that S. mutans populations increased following the adoption of cereal agriculture 12,000 years ago. But the new findings indicate they really skyrocketed around 250 to 750 years ago, when sugar and processed carbs, such as rice and bread, became a big component of human diets. S. mutans particularly loves sucrose, Cassidy says. “It helps it create the sort of sticky film that this bacteria uses to colonize the tooth surface so it can consume all different sugars.”