Jaw in Biological News

Scientists discover why teeth form in a single row

... is the thickening of the epithelium along the jaw line to form a band of cells called the dental ... is expressed in increasing concentration in the jaw mesenchyme as you move from the cheek toward the ... absence, Bmp4 gene expression expands into the jaw mesenchyme outside of the tooth row. A second ...

Childhood chicken pox could affect oral health years later

... disease that can lead to osteonecrosis of the jaw and vision loss in addition to a prolonged ... a condition in which bone in the lower or upper jaw becomes exposed. As a result, the jaw bone suffers severe damage and/or death, ...

USC School of Dentistry researchers uncover link between osteoporosis drugs and jaw infection

... and sticky extracellular material, are causing jaw tissue infections in patients taking ... reports of osteonecrosis (bone death) of the jaw in patients who have been taking the drugs for ... in USC dentistry clinics who had the unusual jaw infection. This is the first study that ...

Study unravels why certain fishes went extinct 65 million years ago

... prediction, Friedman traveled around the world measuring the body size and jaw bones of 249 genera of fossil fishes that lived during the late ... theory with hard data and to quantify the relationship between body size, jaw function and vulnerability of fishes during the Cretaceous extinction, ...

UCSB study finds physical strength, fighting ability revealed in human faces

... that the correlation may lie in the heavier brow ridge and thicker jaw that result from increased levels of testosterone. "Many studies have been ... and men with high testosterone those with a heavy brow ridge and thicker jaw developed bodies that were more prepared for combat." "One reason we ...

Toad research could leapfrog to new muscle model

... can only do work by shortening. By example, Nishikawa explains that the jaw muscles in toads and chameleons shorten in the lower jaw, and the opening ... it has immense application to any device that actually moves." A toad's jaw muscles can produce forces greater than 700 times the animal's weight. ...

Unusual fish-eating dinosaur had crocodile-like skull

... The unusual skull of Baryonyx is very elongate, with a curved or sinuous jaw margin as seen in large crocodiles and alligators. It also had stout ... blade-like serrated ones in meat-eating dinosaurs, and a striking bulbous jaw tip (or nose) that bore a rosette of teeth, more commonly seen today in ...

Dinosaur from Sahara ate like a 'mesozoic cow'

... jaw, forming, in effect, a foot-long pair of scissors. A CT scan of the jaw bones showed up to nine replacements stacked behind each cutting tooth, so ... important things to say about this animals posture and behavior. jaw design was not Nigersaurus only odd characteristic: It had a backbone that ...

Freshwater fish at the top of the food chain evolve more slowly

... parts of the head and mouth. "A fish mouth is much more complicated than our own mouth," says Wainwright. "Whereas we have one bone that moves our jaw fish actually have two dozen separately moving bones, and lots of muscles that move those bones in a coordinated fashion." By mapping these ...

CU-Boulder study shows 53 million-year-old high Arctic mammals wintered in darkness

... ago, first became evident in 1975 when a team led by Mary Dawson of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburg discovered fossil alligator jaw bones. Since then, fossils of aquatic turtles, giant tortoises, snakes and even flying lemurs -- one of the earliest forms of primates -- have been ...

Field Museum paleontologist leads study on two new dinosaurs from China

... traits of larger, geologically younger tyrannosaurs, including a short, broad braincase, broad struts of bone near the temples, expanded areas for jaw muscle attachment on the skull roof, modified "nipping" teeth at the front of the mouth, and expanded vertebral structures to support a large head. ...

Fossil fragments reveal 500-million-year-old monster predator

... is indeed related to Anomalocaris . Like Anomalocaris , Hurdia had a segmented body with a head bearing a pair of spinous claws and a circular jaw structure with many teeth. But it differs from Anomalocaris by the possession of a huge three-part carapace that projects out from the front of ...

Right whale sedation enables disentanglement effort

... Ga., on Jan. 14, 2009, by the Georgia Wildlife Trust aerial survey team, which noted multiple lengths of heavy line cutting in to the whale's upper jaw and left lip and trailing behind the animal. It was tagged with a telemetry buoy by the Georgia DNR to allow it to be tracked. A disentanglement ...

Cleft lip and palate: Genes more important than thought?

... different tissue processes of the face and mouth area do not fuse together or do so insufficiently. This results in a gap remaining between lip, jaw and sometimes the palate. It seems likely that several factors have to add up in order for clefts to form. Both environmental influences which have ...

Toothsome research: Deducing the diet of a prehistoric hominid

... bonepointed to a diet of small, hard seeds. The finite-element analysis threw a spanner in the works. It suggested that A. africanus s facial and jaw anatomy was optimized to handle stress on the premolars, teeth located farther forward in the mouth and most useful for chewing larger hard objects. ...

Early humans had 'jaws of steel'

... reacts to forces in a front-end collision evolutionary scientists built a virtual model of the A. africanus skull and were able to see just how the jaw operated and what forces it could produce. "We started with a CT scan of a skull that is one of the most complete specimens of A. africanus that ...

Single gene lets bacteria jump from host to host

... to shield the squid from hungry predators below. In the pinecone fish, another strain of the bacterium colonizes a light organ within the animal's jaw and helps illuminate the dark reefs in which it forages at night. The fish light organ may also play a role in attracting the zooplankton that make ...

American Chemical Society's Weekly PressPac -- July 9, 2008

... using high-tech instrumentation. They found that the primary chemical in the jaws and pincers of the worm is a unique protein, named Nereis virens jaw protein-1 (Nvjp-1), which is rich in the amino acid histidine. The researchers also characterized the chemical conditions needed for its formation, ...

Geisinger study: Inflammatory disease causes blindness

... known as temporal arteritis. In this disease, arteries swell and restrict blood flow to the brain. Temporal arteritis can cause headaches, jaw soreness and flu-like symptoms. Untreated, the disease can lead to blindness or stroke. The average age for disease onset is 70. Giant cells, ...

Immunosuppressant further linked to birth defects

... the frontal-nasal prominence (which develops into the forehead, nose, upper lip and palate) and the first pharyngeal arch (which develops into the jaw and ear). It should be noted, however, that if a transplant recipient is of fertile age, she can give birth to a healthy baby. The patient needs ...

How is that whale listening?

... of noise on marine organisms." Since 1968, it has been believed that noise vibrations travel through the thin bony walls of toothed whales lower jaw and onto the fat body attached to the ear complex. This research shows however that the thin bony walls do not transmit the vibrations. In fact ...

Marsupial lion tops African lion in fight to death

... prolonged suffocating bite of living big cats. The marsupial lion also had an extremely efficient bite, Wroe says. In addition to very powerful jaw muscles for its size, its muscle and skull architecture were arranged in such a way as to take greater advantage of leverage than in living cats. ...

Fused nasal bones helped tyrannosaurids dismember prey

... enlarged areas for attachment and expansion of jaw muscles and the consequent ability to bite deeply ... T. rex especially had a very strong skull and jaw muscles that would turn it into a zoological ... museum colleagues showed that a T. rex's lower jaw could apply 200,000 newtons of force—that's like ...

Paleontologists discover new mammal from Mesozoic Era

... middle ear bones evolved from the bones of the jaw hinge in their reptilian relatives. However, ... evolutionary pathway via which these precursor jaw bones became separated from the jaw and moved into the middle ear of modern mammals. ...

Sensory feedback during speech: The brain attunes to more than just sound

... robotics to manipulate the brain's perception of jaw movement while words are spoken, researchers have ... that inform the brain of the openness of the jaw or the changing positions of the tongue or lips. ... spoken. The researchers were able to manipulate jaw motion at specific points during speaking and ...

Pleasure and pain: Study shows brain's 'pleasure chemical' is involved in response to pain too

... the researchers induced pain in the volunteers' jaw muscle, and asked them to rate different aspects ... which included a needle inserted into a large jaw muscle, and the expectation of pain and repeated ... both in a control (no pain) state and when their jaw muscles were being injected with harmless salt ...

Ultrasound may help regrow teeth

... offers a non-invasive and novel way to stimulate jaw growth and dental tissue healing. "It's very ... results. He has also shown that LIPUS can improve jaw growth in cases with hemifacial microsomia, a congenital syndrome where one side of the child's jaw or face is underdeveloped compared to the other, ...

'Banana-jawed' fossil mammal linked to rare sound-producing skill

... one? Previous research, he said, suggested such jaw structures likely were found in females. The ... incisor teeth, located in the front of the jaw and used for biting. In modern hyraxes, males ... development in Thyrohyrax of a curved, swollen jaw containing a hollow chamber represented a ...

Changes to embryos can elicit change in adult fish

... of a simple biomechanical system, the lower jaw of the cichlid fish. In addition, they've shown ... Academy of Sciences. "We're using the jaw to think about the genetic basis of biomechanical ... New Hampshire, predicted that components of the jaw that were functionally or developmentally related ...

Experimental gene therapy 'abolishes' arthritis pain and lessens joint damage

... between arthritis and dentistry: a common site of arthritic pain is the jaw joint. Study Details Proteins called receptors are built into ... cells that carry pain messages back and forth between an osteoarthritic jaw joint and the spinal cord. Thus, nerve cells involved in pain ...

No sex for 40 million years? No problem

... into distinct species. Using a combination of DNA sequencing and jaw measurements taken using a scanning electron microscope, the research team ... its legs, the other on its chest, yet they have diverged in body size and jaw shape to occupy these distinct ecological niches. Our results show that, ...

Ladybugs may be cute, but watch out when they get near wine

... developed a larger brain and more vertical face with a less pronounced jaw and smaller teeth at least 300,000 years later than commonly believed, ... Dr. Bromage, whose reconstruction, by contrast, shows a sharply protruding jaw and a brain less than half the size of a modern human"s. These ...

Man's earliest direct ancestors looked more apelike than previously believed

... developed a larger brain and more vertical face with a less pronounced jaw and smaller teeth at least 300,000 years later than commonly believed, ... Dr. Bromage, whose reconstruction, by contrast, shows a sharply protruding jaw and a brain less than half the size of a modern human"s. These ...

Ohio University researchers discover evolutionary oddity in flamingos

... as lead author on the study. "We were investigating the evolution of jaw muscles in lizards, birds and dinosaurs. By sheer luck we discovered something new about flamingos." To get a detailed look at the flamingo's jaw muscle structure, the researchers injected a colored barium/latex mixture ...

Less is more, gene study shows

... the course of evolution, humans lost a gene that produces a particular jaw muscle protein. Perhaps the loss of that gene gave us smaller jaw muscles, making room in our skulls for bigger brains. That's just ...

Birds that make teeth

... has been known that if mouse tooth-forming tissue is in contact with bird jaw tissue, the bird tissue is able to follow the instructions given by the ... a genetic change that permits tooth formation in both the upper and lower jaw of embryonic birds. These teeth show similar developmental position as ...

New research puts a fresh spin on current thinking of speech evolution in humans

... and colleagues have identified a distinct brain region that controls jaw movements in macaque monkeys that is comparable to Broca's area - the ... stimulated, oral and facial motor responses were evoked ?such as jaw movement sequences, as well as respiratory responses. In addition, Broca's ...

Thinking the pain away? Study shows the brain's painkillers may cause 'placebo effect'

... from 14 young healthy men who agreed to allow researchers to inject their jaw muscles with a concentrated salt water solution to cause pain. The ... received the placebo, and after the scan during which they received the jaw injection alone. Nine of the participants were classified as "high ...

U-M scientist to talk about tissue engineering at AAAS

... the real world, accomplishing such feats is more complex. Regenerating the jaw bone of a person undergoing radiation therapy for cancer means managing ... them in the lab, then reintroducing the cells into a damaged area, like a jaw bone damaged too badly to simply heal on its own. A tiny scaffold helps ...