On the cutting edge of organ renewal: Identification, regulation, and evolution of incisor stem cells

The rodent incisor is one of a number of organs that grow continuously throughout the life of an animal. Continuous growth of the incisor arose as an evolutionary adaptation to compensate for abrasion at the distal end of the tooth. The sustained turnover of cells that deposit the mineralized dental tissues is made possible by epithelial and mesenchymal stem cells residing at the proximal end of the incisor. A complex network of signaling pathways and transcription factors regulates the formation, maintenance, and differentiation of these stem cells during development and throughout adulthood. Research over the past 15 years has led to significant progress in our understanding of this network, which includes FGF, BMP, Notch, and Hh signaling, as well as cell adhesion molecules and micro-RNAs. This review surveys key historical experiments that laid the foundation of the field and discusses more recent findings that definitively identified the stem cell population, elucidated the regulatory network, and demonstrated possible genetic mechanisms for the evolution of continuously growing teeth