Evolutionary Genetic Approaches to Dental Anthropology

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9408402 Ken Weiss Teeth and their comparative features have been of central importance in physical anthropology. They are among the best-preserved traits, and so are critical in fossil studies. Yet the genetic control over their development and different morphologies is not understood at all. This ground-breaking project will use evolutionary approaches to adapt the knowledge we have gained on developmental genetics in mice to primate dental variation. The Dlx and Msx genes will be searched for regulatory genes expressed in teeth. The coding and adjacent regulatory regions of one gene will be sequenced in a homodont species, and a divergent heterodont, and four divergent primates. The aligned sequences will be searched for control elements conserved across the entire evolution of teeth, and those elements whose variation may correspond phylogenitically to changes in dental morphology during primate evolution.