High-throughput gene and protein expression analysis in pulp biologic research: review

In recent years, the use of high-throughput transcriptomics and proteomics has expanded rapidly in molecular biology and biomedical science. These methods, including DNA microarray and suppression subtractive hybridization at the mRNA level and 2-dimensional electrophoresis and antibody arrays at the protein level, enable studying the expression levels of thousands of genes and proteins simultaneously and thus allow forming genome-wide expression profiles and evaluation of biologic signaling networks.

This review discusses the most used high-throughput expression analysis methods and their use in pulp biologic research.

The use of these methods in pulp biology has been limited but is expanding. The methods have been used to compare pulp and bone marrow stem cells and to study the function of pulp tissue in vivo and in vitro.

Even though the adoption of the high-throughput transcriptomic and proteomic techniques in pulp biology has been fairly slow, their use is increasing and will significantly increase the understanding of pulp tissue physiology and pathology. The comprehensive data of the transcriptome and proteome of the pulp tissue and the odontoblasts will facilitate the understanding of their functions during health and disease and provide novel target molecules for diagnosis and treatment. Identification of the genes controlling odontoblast differentiation might lead to development of methods enabling induction of reparative dentin formation under carious lesions. Identification of the genes active during dentinogenesis might lead to recognition of regulatory factors, which would cause secondary dentinogenesis to proceed at the rate of primary dentinogenesis.