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MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for SoyCow0824

[...] Today, people’s oral microbiomes vary much more from one person to the next than they did in the Middle Ages. The medieval men of Tjærby shared very similar lifestyles and monotonous diets; the traces of food proteins left in their dental plaque suggested dairy and goat milk, along with oats. In the 21st century, our diets include much more variety than the average medieval villager could have imagined, and one person’s diet may look much different from another’s. Different personal histories of antibiotic use, along with environmental factors and genetics, also shape microbial ecosystems in drastically different ways from person to person.

Scientists aren’t yet sure exactly how all of those factors combine to influence the invisible ecosystems that call our bodies home. In part, that’s because we don’t even completely understand which organisms live inside us; RNA studies have only recently discovered many species of oral bacteria, and several of them are nearly impossible to grow in the lab. But the sheer individuality of our microbiomes also presents a challenge. Some studies have suggested that the makeup of a person's microbiome may be as unique as a fingerprint, and that makes it hard to do large-scale comparisons of mouth microbiomes between populations.

Source: https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/11/medieval-dental-plaque-sheds-light-on-how-our-microbiomes-have-changed/

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