Scientists grow new teeth for mice!
Posted by Science Oxford on October 13, 2009 | comments
This is amazing. Scienctists have actually bioengineered some mice germ cells that if implanted in the the jaw bones of mice, they will grow new teeth. I hope they do this for humans soon, it would be very reasurring to know that you could just grow some more.
What do you think?
Visit this page »Researchers say they have engineered the growth of fully functional replacement teeth in mice, with the growth occurring in the tooth’s proper place.
Technology exists to develop some tissues in the lab that can be transplanted into animals. But Etsuko Ikeda of Tokyo-based Organ Technologies Inc. and Tokyo University of Science in Chiba, Japan, and colleagues explored ways to grow an organ in place.
The work could serve as a prelude to other organ replacements using a similar technique, they proposed.
The researchers developed a bioengineered tooth germ, a seed-like tissue containing the cells and genetic instructions necessary to form a tooth. They then transplanted the germ into the jawbones of mice.
The germs regularly grew into replacement teeth, the investigators said. Tracking gene activity in the transplanted germ with a fluorescent glowing protein, the researchers found that genes normally activated in tooth development were also active during the engineered replacement’s growth.
The engineered tooth’s hardness was comparable to that of natural teeth, and nerve fibers could grow throughout and respond to pain stimulation, they also found. The results are reported in this week’s early online edition of the research journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
“We propose this technology as a model for future organ replacement therapies,” the researchers wrote.
What do you think?