HERE’S something to smile about: replacement teeth have been grown from scratch and implanted into the mouths of adult mice. A similar technique might one day replace missing teeth in humans.
Takashi Tsuji at the Tokyo University of Science in Japan and his colleagues extracted single tooth mesenchymal and epithelial cells – the two cell types that develop into a tooth – from mouse embryos. They persuaded these cells to multiply and injected them into a drop of collagen gel. Within days, the cells formed tooth buds, the early stage of normal tooth formation.
The team extracted teeth from adult mice and…
