A British research team has isolated a bacterium that can eat other bacteria's waste products which lead to bad breath and smelly feet:
These smelly, highly reactive 'one-carbon' compounds are naturally produced from the breakdown of sulphur-containing amino acids in the mouth.
Dr Ann Wood and her colleagues at Kings College, London, reported these findings in the August issue of Environmental Microbiology. The odour-eating methylotrophic bacteria were isolated from the tongue, tooth plaques (supra-gingival plaques) and gum edge (sub-gingival plaques) of volunteers. They include strains of Bacillus, Brevibacterium casei, Hyphomicrobium sulfonivorans1, Methylobacterium, Micrococcus luteus and Variovorax paradoxus.
