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Comment
. 2009 Sep;5(9):e1000655.
doi: 10.1371/journal.pgen.1000655. Epub 2009 Sep 18.

Molecular tooth decay

Rob DeSalle  1
Affiliations
Comment

Molecular tooth decay

Rob DeSalle. PLoS Genet. 2009 Sep.
No abstract available

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The author has declared that no competing interests exist.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1. Skulls of toothed, toothed but enamelless, and toothless mammals.
T = Toothed, T−E = Toothed without Enamel, and X = Toothless. (A) Manis pentadactylus (X, DigiMorph), (B) Dasypus novemcinctus (T−E, DigiMorph); (C) Choloepus hoffmanni (T−E, DigiMorph); (D) Sus scrofa (T, DigiMorph). The DigiMorph images are derived from http://digimorph.org/.
Figure 2
Figure 2. Hypothetical tree showing relationships of four toothed mammals (yellow and white components represent a full tooth), three enamelless tooth mammals (lack of white element represents loss of enamel), and four edentulous (toothless) mammals (slashed circle).
Four branch types are then placed onto the tree using character reconstruction of the tooth anatomy and reconstruction of the ENAM gene. Functional branches (black) are those that have terminal nodes with a species with enamel or an internal node that was reconstructed as having had enamel. By definition, these branches will have genes on them that are reconstructed as having no stop codons or frameshifts. All other branches that are reconstructed as not having enamel in teeth can be premutation, mixed, or pseudogenes. In addition, any internal node that was reconstructed as not having enamel can be premutation, mixed, or pseudogenic. The presence or absence of stop codons or frameshifts in the ENAM gene was then used to establish the reconstructed state of these branches. In the figure, an uninterrupted gene has no asterisks on it while a gene with stop codons or frameshifts shows an asterisk. These branches are categorized as pre-mutation (blue) if the ENAM gene on the branch had no stop codons or frameshifts. A mixed branch (purple) contains the first detected occurrence of a frameshift mutation or stop codon in ENAM. And finally, a branch is a pseudogene branch (red) if it postdates the first occurrence of the frameshift or stop codon.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Comment on

References

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