Patients with co-existence of isolates with different bab genes profiles: A. Inter-micro-niche variation. In patients numbered 32B, isolates from a1, a3, c1 y c3 showed babB gene recombined with babA promoter region at locus A and with babC promoter region at locus B. After initial translational ATG codon babB sequences at loci A and B are identical except for the CT repeats number. In addition, in isolates from c2, babB at locus A lacked the ATG start codon. B. Intra-micro-niche variation. a1, a2 and a3: antrum biopsies, c1, c2 and c3: corpus.