Abstract
Isolation of sufficient quantities of pure populations of odontoblasts from healthy and diseased teeth will facilitate our understanding of dentinogenesis during development and repair. Here we describe a novel Piezo-power microdissection (PPMD) technique for the isolation of pure populations of odontoblasts and pulpal tissue from formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded, mature, healthy and carious human teeth. Odontoblasts and pulpal tissue gene expression were subsequently studied in ribonucleic acid isolated from PPMD preparations using a semi-quantitative reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction approach. Data confirmed that the genes for dentine sialophosphoprotein and Nestin are preferentially expressed in odontoblasts, whilst the genes for both collagen-1alpha and collagen-3alpha were expressed preferentially in pulpal tissue, particularly in carious samples. PPMD provides a novel and powerful approach to isolate pure populations of dental tissues and cells from fixed specimens for subsequent downstream molecular analyses.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 731-6 |
Number of pages | 6 |
Journal | Archives of Oral Biology |
Volume | 48 |
Issue number | 10 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 1 Oct 2003 |
Keywords
- odontoblasts
- RNA
- microdissection
- dental pulp
- gene expression