incisor

To learn more about the composition of rodent tooth enamel, Vesna Srot and colleagues captured high-resolution images of incisor specimens from several species.

Building on techniques previously developed by Campàs, in which minute droplets inserted between developing embryonic cells sense the forces exerted by cells on each other, and through observations of an embryonic incisor tooth, the researchers found that pressure influences a cell's fate -- they feel the squeeze and use this information to organize themselves.

"Just imagine that happening in a confined space. What happens in the incisor knot is that the cells multiply in number in a fixed space and this causes a pressure to build up at the center, which then becomes a cluster of specialized cells."

For many Angelenos, it’s lowriders, gleaming fronts on our canine and incisor teeth, a purse cast in sterling silver.

The researchers solved the mystery by analyzing a molar and an incisor - detecting the presence of a gene regulating a certain enamel-forming protein to reveal it was a woman.