Wouldn’t it be better to have a probiotic toothpaste?

I looked up mutacin—1140, found this 2018 study looking at the effect on staph and possibly positive persistence in the gut.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6256755/

> “Nisin and mutacin 1140 have potent activities (nanomolar or submicromolar activity) against well-known Gram-positive pathogens, including Staphylococcus aureus and Streptococcus pneumoniae. Nisin has been used as a food preservative for more than 50 years without inducing significant resistance”

> “ Despite the short half-life of mutacin 1140 in blood, analogs of mutacin 1140 were demonstrated to have increased gastric stability and were effective in treating a Clostridium difficile infection in hamsters “

this very interesting to me.

we fought off a extreme overgrowth of staph aureus with a regiment of probiotics and bacillus subtillis (a bacterium found in dirt that is known to disrupt quorum of bacteria that create biofilms.

biofilms are a huge reason to floss and brush our teeth, it’s like a slime that protects and nourishes the bad bacteria on our teeth.

this bit from the sparse wikipedia was interesting. “Mutacin 1140 belongs to the epidermin subset of type Al lantibiotics.”

are there other bacterium in our oral/gut that produce these kind of compounds?

citing the discovery from 1987? synthesis of the strain in 2002, and then moving onto the product recommendation without going into the mechanisms that allow such a bacteria to persist after just one magical application feels very snake oil to me.

we can use metagenomics to test the rna and dna of our oral microbiome. (testing is somewhere around $200-400 a swab currently)

show me the data even with a low N value of test subjects that give a oral microbiome analysis weeks, months, and years out after just 1 application and you’ll have my curiosity, maybe my money.

also give recommendations about if and what habits and behaviors would wreck this expensive bacterium’s viability in our mouths.

* this is coming from a father whose tested their child’s poop with inhale every 4 weeks or so several times to debug a believed to be rare (but science doesn’t truly know) staphylococcus aureus & eczema issue

i’m skeptical but i’ll stay open minded

found this explanation on why they went the probiotic route rather than seek FDA approval. from their subreddit that https://x.com/yishan/status/1780131552615420189

> 1. Move forward with manufacturing and distributing this as a probiotic supplement > 2. Once a critical mass of biohackers and early adopters take this treatment, other third-party research can get involved

https://www.reddit.com/r/lanternbioworks/s/01haEdviDz

Comment is more about the pseudo ethical high ground

do you really have better gripe with wrinkled fingers underwater?