School of Dentistry

Discovery on the structure of teeth by researcher Alban Desoutter - January 16, 2023

Published on in Podcast

Alban Desoutter and Frédéric Cuisinier from the LBN talk to us about enamel drapes, a discovery that could explain the high resistance of our teeth.

PODCAST – Le Mag de Clapas – Radio Clapas: https://podcasts.audiomeans.fr/le-mag-de-clapas-radio-clapas-aaf2f24c9346/236-decouverte-sur-la-structure-des-dents-par-le-chercheur-alban-desoutter-213fdedd

To have long teeth, or to have a grudge against someone, often a hard tooth or, why not, a hollow tooth if you have fangs. Fangs to bite into life with gusto or, on the contrary, to gnash your teeth until they grind. Expressions referring to our canines, molars, and other incisors pepper our vocabulary and thus testify to the importance we attach to our teeth. In psychoanalysis, Gustave Jung and others even interpreted dreams featuring falling teeth as a sign of fear or resistance to change. Don't smile, because it is undoubtedly to prevent little ones from breaking their teeth on this anxiety that our imaginations, armed to the teeth, finally gave birth to a mouse to recover teeth and peace of mind without waiting for chickens to grow teeth.

As you can see, today's topic has us opening our mouths wide to talk about a scientific discovery that could explain the great resistance of our teeth. Alban Desoutter and Frédéric Cuisinier both work at the Bioengineering and Nanosciences Laboratory in Montpellier, the former as a technical assistant and doctoral student, the latter as a teacher-researcher. Using 3D technology, they discovered a mysterious structure hidden in the hollows of our teeth, which they named enamel drapes. Their findings were published in the journal Archives of Oral Biology.

to read:

Publication: Human tooth enamel tuft drapes revealed by microtomography, A . Desoutter, I. Panayotov, F. Cuisinier, D. Carayon, Archives of Oral Biology, September 2022.  

Draped tufts: a tooth structure revealed in 3D could finally explain its high resistance, Sciences et avenir, November 18, 2022