Amelogenin: a Protein to Smile About

Amelogenin: a Protein to Smile About

How did we humans (and other vertebrates) get our sparkling smiles? The hard white coating on our teeth, the enamel, is made up of hydroxyapatite—the same mineral that forms our bones. In our teeth, hydroxyapatite is organized into parallel arrays of columnar apatite crystals called prisms. The growth and organization of enamel prisms is controlled by special proteins secreted by cells known as...

Nothing to smile about

BACKGROUND Several studies have demonstrated the high incidence of periodontal disorders among patients suffering from mental illnesses, probably because of self-care impairment, the difficult financial conditions, and the lack of motivation. The primary aim of this study was to evaluate the impact of depression and alexithymia on periodontal status. Due to the influence of personality traits o...

Amelogenin is a cell adhesion protein.

Amelogenin, the major protein component of tooth enamel, is shown to be a cell adhesion protein. Since it had been shown that an amelogenin-containing preparation, Emdogain, possessed cell-adhesive activity, we tested the hypothesis that amelogenin was responsible for cell-adhesive activity. Recombinant amelogenin was found to promote adhesion at less than 15 micro g/60-mm plate and requires di...

Ectasia After Corneal Refractive Surgery: Nothing to SMILE About.

Smile with a smile

Smiling during talking yields speech with higher formants, and hence larger formant dispersion. Previous studies have shown that motor resonance during perception of words related to smiling can activate muscles responsible for the smiling action. If word perception causes smiling activation for such smile-related words, then this motor resonance may occur also during production, resulting in l...