So it was that Relman, starting a grand tradition of microbiologists sequencing their own microbiomes, asked his dentist to scrape some plaque from the crevices of his gums and dunk it in a sterile collection tube. He took the gunk back to his lab, and decoded its DNA. It could have led to nothing. The mouth was arguably the most well-studied microbial habitat in the human body. Leeuwenhoek had looked at it. Rosebury had examined it. Microbiologists had cultured nearly 500 strains of bacteria from its various niches. If any body part was immune to new discoveries, it would be the mouth.
