What's in a kiss? 80 million bacteria

To be clear, we’re talking about French kissing here, not a grandmotherly peck.

Kort and colleagues believe this vigorous osculation could be a way to change your microbiome. “There’s a number of studies that show that it’s healthy to have a high diversity of microorganisms in your mouth,” says Kort. And it might be fun to try.

Could changing the microbiome be as simple as a lip lock? “It is provocative to think that we can perhaps donate beneficial microbes by an ‘oral microbiome transplant,’ ” says Joseph Petrosino, a microbiologist at the Baylor College of Medicine who didn’t work on the study, in an email to Shots.