Amelogenin proteins, the principal components of the developing dental enamel extracellular matrix, have been postulated to facilitate the elongated and oriented growth of the carbonated apatite crystals during enamel formation. We previously reported that amelogenin caused modulation of apatite crystals nucleated on a bioactive glass (Bioglass(R)) in vitro. Here, the effects of amelogenin on t...

Biomimetic reconstruction of tooth enamel is a significant topic of study in materials science and dentistry as a novel approach to the prevention, restoration, and treatment of defective enamel. We have developed a new amelogenin-containing chitosan hydrogel for enamel reconstruction that works through amelogenin supramolecular assembly, stabilizing Ca-P clusters and guiding their arrangement ...

Amelogenin, enamelin, sheathlin (ameloblastin/ amelin), enamelysin (MMP-20), and KLK4 (EMSP-1) are the major structural proteins and proteinases in developing tooth enamel. Recently, odontoblasts were reported to express amelogenin, the most abundant enamel protein. In this study, we hypothesized that odontoblasts express all enamel proteins and proteases, and we measured their relative mRNA le...

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...

We report here the first results of a method to extract and sequence mature enamel proteins from modern human and Neanderthal tooth enamel. Using MALDI-TOF/TOF mass spectrometry and a combination of direct sequencing and peptide mass mapping we have sequenced a peptide from the tyrosine-rich amelogenin peptide (TRAP) of the X isoform of the amelogenin protein for modern and recent human samples...

BACKGROUND Monitoring the engraftment of donor cells after allogeneic stem cell transplantation is important for the early diagnosis of graft failure or relapse of disease. The objective of the present study was to evaluate the application of the amelogenin gene for the assessment of chimerism in samples of patients who had received a sex-mismatched stem cell transplantation. METHODS A polyme...

The Asakura-Oosawa (AO) model describes the effective attractive interaction induced when two large colloidal bodies are immersed in a solvent consisting of smaller macromolecules. The effective interaction is induced due to an unbalanced osmotic pressure arising from the depletion of the macromolecules in the region between the two bodies. We model amelogenin, a hydrophobic protein and with a ...