Personnel

The ToothPrint team (1998– )

Funding

Funding

We gratefully acknowledge major financial support from the Health Research Council (NZ), NZ Lottery Health Research, The University of Otago, and (from 2003) The University of Melbourne.

Methods

The limited availability of sample from developing rat teeth has had a major influence on our experimental approach, as reviewed [5] . Besides identifying proteins at the primary structural level, we also have used functional assays to detect proteins of interest (eg. calcium-binding proteins and calmodulin-binding proteins were detected using 2-D blot overlays [1-3  10]).

For rat enamel cells, epithelia microdissected from developing mandibular molars (ex 5-10-day-old pups) were homogenised in low ionic strength buffer and then ultracentrifuged to give soluble and particulate fractions. Such fractionation was required to separate the insoluble cytoskeletal proteins, which otherwise obliterated many of the major soluble protein spots. Enamel matrix proteins (extracellular) were solubilised from the secretory enamel layer of 15-day-old rat mandibular incisors, using trifluoroacetic acid and SDS [3  10].

Protein samples were solubilised and subjected to denaturing mini 2-D gel electrophoresis on a modified 'Mighty Small' system (from Hoefer/Pharmacia). Coomassie-Blue-stained protein spots were identified by Edman microsequencing and MALDI-MS of tryptic peptides after in-gel digestion and microbore RP-HPLC [5]. 

Website

The original site was maintained by Jon Magnum.

In 2020, the site was redesigned by Robert Turnbull and Dr Daniel Russo-Batterham from the Melbourne Data Analytics Platform (MDAP).