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I'm surprised that mammals evolved to not regrow teeth. You'd think it would be a significant advantage.
I wouldn't imagine it'd play a role in reproducing though. It may help ones ability to live longer, but they have probably procreated long before tooth loss has become a major issue of well being or mortality.
It’s also only recently that we’ve been living for so long.
https://www.verywellhealth.com/longevity-throughout-history-2224054#toc-prehistoric-life-expectancy
this is misleading, the article starts by saying that life expectancy was 30-35 but then goes on to say that this is the average lifespan, which includes the fact that most people died in childhood.
When accounting for that, the average lifespan becomes at least 50 years old.
Most mammals instead evolved to have their teeth keep growing, like beavers, thus they need to keep using their teeth to keep them from growing out of control.
Secondly, humans in particular, added tooth-enamel-eating-bacteria into our diet hundreds of thousands of years ago. Before that, we didn't have a huge number of issues with our teeth, and so perhaps not enough time has actually passed since we got the bacteria eats our teeth for an evolutionary advantage that stops it from being an issue? Evolution isn't so cut and dry, it's not like it's trying to solve problems. People with resistances to mouth bacteria probably exist, but are they reproducing enough to become the dominant geneaology? Who the fuck knows?
They do exist, from memory they have another type of bacteria instead and there's even a project trying to transfer it from people with it to people without it.
Also as you said evolution doesn't try to fix stuff and there's a whole lot of stuff that could have evolved for the better (heck, we're not even that well adapted to be standing up!), but if it doesn't prevent reproduction then it gets passed down.
Why can't we eliminate the bacteria?
That's like asking why we can't just eliminate gonorrhea... people keep inoculating each other with the bad shit.
I do tell my expecting parents (who happen to have bad teeth) that they should not test the food in their mouth and use the same spoon with their new child, as they will be passing on their bacteria to the kid. I do also imply they shouldn't share things like drinks.
Whether or not they listen to me isn't my problem...
It's everywhere. You'd have to sterilize the entire planet.
For evolution to fix a problem that problem has to kill off everyone that isn't immune to it before they can breed. If that doesn't happen people with shitty teeth just keep getting born even if some have a mutation to regrow them.
Or at least space them out a bit. You get one set for the first 5-10 years, and then the second set has to last you the remaining 60-70.
Getting a new set at like 35-40 seems like a more sensible system to me.
Gotta be awkward at the office when Dave starts losing his baby teeth and has his midlife crisis at the same time
There didn’t used to be multivitamins. The broad spectrum of hominid diets never guaranteed you’d get enough trace minerals and elements to keep growing more teeth and there wasn’t evolutionary pressure to do so when you’re like five to ten years into your adult teeth when puberty hits.
mammal teeth work pretty well as long you don't eat too much sugar and acids.
As I have had a really bad run of terrible dentist experiences, bridges are scary and implants are expensive, I'd really like this to work well, and be reasonably priced.
ETA Or, it could be my superhero origin story.
Likely prohibitively expensive, will take a long af time to reach wider markets and most likely never pass trials
All my predictions
I had a really fantastic dentist. Spent some time kinda homeless/broken and now I have no clue where she went.
How close are we to growing teeth ANYWHERE we want on the body?
This is my teratoma, his name is Terry Toma.
Imagine getting new teeth but all of them are wisdom teeth.
Important to note that the initial form of this treatment is to trigger the growth of teeth that failed to grow in the first place, at least last I read about it. An important first step, but for now it may be dependent on there being an existing "tooth bud" down in the jaw to get going.
I suspect that in the long run we'll need to figure out how to implant a new tooth bud, probably made using the patient's stem cells, to grow replacements for teeth that have been lost later in life.
Doing this from memory, but I think there was a paper a few years back proposing using stem cells in an implanted calcium lattice. Basically an artificial implant that would grow into an actual rooted tooth.
Ok but hear me out, what happens if you inject it into your feet?
If you don't want to sleep in the next couple days, search for "Teratoma"
Teratoema.
If we regrow teeth, we can regrow bone, muscle, and nerves. Almost immediately, that technology will be privatized and only the rich will be able to afford it.
Capitalism will say "Fuck you poors".
Probably be prohibitively expensive for anyone to do it as an elective procedure.
When I was young I was Tough and Ruthless. Now that I am old I am Rough and Toothless.
I hope they figure out how to 3d print gum tissue. Harvesting donor tissue from the roof of your mouth certainly works, but is probably the worst part of the recovery.
Seems like it should be doable. But I doubt it's high on the list compared to kidneys, livers, etc.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
"We want to do something to help those who are suffering from tooth loss or absence," lead researcher Katsu Takahashi told Japanese newspaper The Mainichi.
"While there has been no treatment to date providing a permanent cure, we feel that people's expectations for tooth growth are high."
In 2021, his team discovered a gene – uterine sensitization-associated gene-1 (USAG-1) – that appeared to stop the production of additional teeth in mice.
Deactivating that same gene and stopping production of the protein it regulates has also caused other animals to grow lost, or even additional, teeth.
Takahashi and his team have spun up their own company called Toregem Biopharma to commercialize the USAG-1 drug, and hope to have it on the market by 2030.
While initial tests are mainly focused on congenital tooth loss, the team hopes teeth lost due to cavities, injury, and other accidents will be regrowable as well.
The original article contains 427 words, the summary contains 150 words. Saved 65%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Can't quite place my tooth on why, but I get the feeling this might be one of those AI generated pics I hear so much about
Jesus that makes me uncomfortable
This is going to be in fashion in a hundred years. Then with gold bling plates on the front.
I wonder what it would do for those of us who have had dental implants.
I had a tooth removed and replaced with a socket bone grafted into my skull to which a crown is bolted. If I were to lose another tooth, what would happen if I took this drug?
That's really cool and exciting. But guys, I need to regrow my gums. I have a perfectly good tooth that a dentist is considering removing because the gum lose around it is profound.
Imagine junkies of this drug would look like tarkatans.