The aim of this study was to determine whether there was any difference in the degree of enamel loss at bond-up, debond and enamel clean-up when two different adhesive systems were tested and with four different methods of enamel clean-up. The adhesive systems were 37 per cent o-phosphoric acid with Transbond XT (group 1) and 10 per cent poly(acrylic acid) conditioner with Fuji Ortho LC (group ...

Afropithecus turkanensis, a 17-17.5 million year old large-bodied hominoid from Kenya, has previously been reported to be the oldest known thick-enamelled Miocene ape. Most investigations of enamel thickness in Miocene apes have been limited to opportunistic or destructive studies of small samples. Recently, more comprehensive studies of enamel thickness and microstructure in Proconsul, Lufengp...

During eating, the teeth usually endure the sharply temperature changes because of different foods. It is of importance to investigate the heat transfer and heat dissipation behavior of the dentino-enamel junction (DEJ) of human tooth since dentine and enamel have different thermophysical properties. The spatial and temporal temperature distributions on the enamel, dentine, and pulpal chamber o...

Dental enamel thickness continues to feature prominently in anthropological studies of ape and human evolution, as well as studies of preventative oral care and treatment. Traditional studies of enamel thickness require physical sectioning of teeth for linear and scaled measurements. Recent applications of microtomographic imaging allow scientists to employ larger and more diverse samples, incl...

D uring mammalian tooth formation, two proteinases are secreted by ameloblasts: enamelysin (MMP-20) and kallikrein-4 (KLK4). Enamelysin is the early protease. It is expressed by ameloblasts throughout the secretory stage and part of the maturation stage. KLK4 is the late protease; its expression by ameloblasts begins in the transition stage and continues throughout enamel maturation. 5 Expressi...

D uring mammalian tooth formation, two proteinases are secreted by ameloblasts: enamelysin (MMP-20) and kallikrein-4 (KLK4). Enamelysin is the early protease. It is expressed by ameloblasts throughout the secretory stage and part of the maturation stage. KLK4 is the late protease; its expression by ameloblasts begins in the transition stage and continues throughout enamel maturation. 5 Expressi...

One of the few uncontested viewpoints in studies of enamel thickness is that the molars of the African apes, Pan and Gorilla, possess "thin" enamel, while Pongo and modern humans possess varying degrees of "thick" enamel, even when interspecific differences in overall body or tooth size are taken into account. Such studies focus primarily on estimates of the total volume of enamel relative to t...

Fraunhofer diffraction patterns of human enamel samples were photographed with a helium-neon laser beam (lambda = 633 nm). The first-order diffraction angle was in reasonable agreement with a prediction based upon enamel prisms acting as a two-dimensional grating. These results support the hypothesis that enamel diffracts light because of the periodic structure of enamel prisms with interprisma...

Tooth development is regulated by epithelial-mesenchymal interactions and their reciprocal molecular signaling. Bone morphogenetic protein 2 (Bmp2) is essential for tooth formation. However, the role of Bmp2 during enamel formation remains unknown in vivo. In this study, the role of Bmp2 in the regulation of postnatal enamel formation was investigated via the conditional ablation of Bmp2 in ena...