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From the perspective of A. Murat Eren, PhD, the mouth is the perfect place to study microbial communities. Not only is it the beginning of the GI tract, but it s also a very special and small environment that s microbially diverse enough that we can really start to answer interesting questions about microbiomes and their evolution, said Eren, an assistant professor in the Department of Medicine at the University of Chicago. There s a surprising amount of site specificity, in that you find defined patterns of microbes in different areas of the mouth the microbes associated with the tongue are very different from those on the plaque on your teeth, he continued. Your tongue microbes are more similar to those living on someone else s tongue than they are to those living in your throat or on your gums!