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Gene-Engineered Mouth Bacteria

lanternbioworks.com

201–210 of 312 posts

Re: Gene-Engineered Mouth Bacteria

#201

A conversation with my friend who was a dentistry student, ~2013. > [The friend, let's call her L, trying to dissuade me from drinking some fizzy drink] > J: But I won't get a cavity if the liquid doesn't touch my teeth. > L: Cavities are caused by the ensuing low ph environment, not by contact with teeth > J: Does that mean I can drink as much of it as I want as long as I rinse my mouth with water afterwards? > L, w…

I've done everything the experts have said, we were too poor for sweets, but they have continued to prove themselves wrong.

Something I find interesting is the role zinc plays in the oral cavity, a sufficiently high intake see's an increase of zinc in the saliva, which in turn reduces the oral bacteria levels, zinc will appear in the enamel of the teeth, and zinc has a similar oesteoblastic effect with bones where its also stored for quick release. The effect it has on bone marrow, increasing stem cell numbers, and people will be familiar with the idea of taking zinc at the start of a cold to half the duration, I'm left wondering if zinc is deliberately ignored by medical experts for fear of being put out of work!

Re: Gene-Engineered Mouth Bacteria

#202

Doing a couple Google/Twitter searches for this company it's pretty obvious it's coming out of the Berkeley-area EA/rationalist cluster, which automatically makes me pretty skeptical. These people don't exactly have a stellar track record of medical startups (recall all the hype around MetaMed, which delivered precisely nothing).

Their org chart includes "Aella", who is apparently acting as their "media advisor" [0]. That tells you just about everything you need to know about this organization.

[0] https://nitter.net/Aella_Girl/status/1705772547781140541

Re: Gene-Engineered Mouth Bacteria

#203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they can charge $40-$80 (or more) for a fluoride treatment. It's actually how they make money on cleanings This is nonsense. Many dentists, mine included, don’t apply fluoride. (They trust you to use toothpaste.)

It's not nonsense. Perhaps many don't, but most ask (at least where I am). They literally ask you when you go in for a cleaning if you want fluoride and then charge you. My current dentist charges $40. My last dentist (Orange County) charged $80, which was a total scam place I only went to once.

Some years ago, maybe 25, no dentists in the USA applied fluoride. Yet somehow they stayed in business.

Re: Gene-Engineered Mouth Bacteria

#204
Alternatively, a non-intrusive supplement with DIM has recently been found effective against the Streptococcus Mutans bacteria.

3,3′-Diindolylmethane (DIM) decreased the Streptococcus mutans biofilm, a leading contributor to plaque and cavities, by 90%.

Source: https://scitechdaily.com/90-reduction-scientists-discover-na...

Re: Gene-Engineered Mouth Bacteria

#205
Michael Laufer from the Four Thieves Vinegar Collective gave a talk that included a bit about this at a 2018 Defcon talk at the bio-hacking village. You can watch it here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzqEJM8B0h4&t=1935s. Entire talk is quite entertaining but this segment always stuck with me since I get cavities fairly frequently.

Re: Gene-Engineered Mouth Bacteria

#207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn’t look at that Google drive, but Google search gave me: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12369203 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caries_vaccine As a layman, I would be concerned about trying to control a bacterium called Streptococcus mutans , as that, to me, signals “this thing mutates rapidly”.

Mutations trend towards stable states. Stable states further trend towards states where fast mutation becomes disabled because it's in a "good" stable zone. Symbiosis is the ultimate stable state. You can get stable states in intermediate zones like hiv infections, but these zones are not as good as symbiosis. They have potential to kill off a weak population, additionally humans are actively combatting the virus. In…

But here, we move this organism to a state of which we don’t know whether it’s stable. If it isn’t, it may take a while to get back to a stable state and, in-between, it could be nasty.

Also, I would think the Spanish flu, the Hongkong flu, COVID-19, etc. are examples of cases where “trending towards stable states” had fairly dire consequences.

Re: Gene-Engineered Mouth Bacteria

#208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Water also just dissolves the sugar and reduces the amount sitting in and on our teeth. I do this same thing and haven’t had a cavity in a very long time.

Is the rinsing needed, strictly speaking? Is there something special about spitting the water out afterwards instead of e.g. swallowing it?

You should rinse and spit it out in the morning, don't swallow as you will be swallowing significantly more plaque from the over night build up. After initial morning cleaning swallowing should be fine.

Re: Gene-Engineered Mouth Bacteria

#209

This is certainly an interesting idea, but there's absolutely no way for anyone to judge whether the claim on this page is bulletproof true, something plausible worth researching more, or just total nonsense. But the fact that there isn't a single link to any scientific paper or evidence whatsoever, or even a single person's name linked to the site (or source of funding or anything ), makes me assume this is just spa…

Hi! These are friends of mine. There is much more detail in the Google Drive (linked from the About page): https://drive.google.com/drive/u/2/folders/18ZDSe92LgLmS0sUb...

Sorry, but we don't know you either, so a word-of-mouth referral doesn't tell us much here. The Google Drive link doesn't provide anything substantive, like links to peer-reviewed, published research.

Re: Gene-Engineered Mouth Bacteria

#210
This seems like a pretty huge caveat (from the "Methodology for Inoculation, and Caveats" doc in their linked GDrive):

> Do not expose children under the age of five to this strain, including by sharing food or liquids with them. Disruptions to early microbiome development can carry through someone’s entire life.

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