Humans looks to gators for tips on regrowing teeth.
Alligators replace their whole mouth full of teeth – all 80 of them – 50 times throughout their lives, while humans only grow two sets.
Thus, dental researchers are looking to gators for potential insights into how to spur tooth regeneration in people.
Studies on snakes and geckos show they are able to continuously replace their teeth, but gators are of particular interest in human-related studies as their teeth also grow in bony sockets.
Previous regeneration studies have located the source of the signal to sprout another tooth. Called the dental lamina, the stem-cell rich portion of the gum stimulates growth. For some reason, the lamina in humans shuts off after the adult teeth come in.
Researchers are hoping to find the precise growth triggers in gators, hoping that they can be replicated in human mouths.
They believe they’ve isolated a protein compound that looks especially promising, but say finding the right combination of it with all of the other elements likely involved will be tricky.
Also challenging is keeping alligators as test subjects, period. The aforementioned 80 teeth are housed in a jaw packing one of the world’s most powerful bites.
