Feb 20 2007
Regrowing teeth
When I was young, I had a recurring dream theme that really used to freak me out: loose, missing, or in-the-process-of-falling-out teeth. Later versions of the dream usually entailed some measure of relief after the initial stomach-turning horror, as my dream-self discovered that upon losing a tooth another one was there growing in its place (despite it being an adult tooth, go figure). I’ll leave the dream analysis as an exercise for the reader, but I’m thinking now that maybe I was just having visions of the future… 
According to a Reuter’s article, Japanese scientists have been successful at bioengineering a tooth and transplanting it into a mouse:
They used primitive cells, not quite as early as stem cells, and injected them into a framework of collagen, the material that holds the body together.
After growing them, they found their structures had matured into the components that make teeth, including dentin, enamel, dental pulp, blood vessels, and periodontal ligaments.
<snip>
The teeth grew and developed normally when transplanted into a mouse, said Takashi Tsuji of the Tokyo University of Science in Chiba, Japan and colleagues.
Nifty.
