Why can’t teeth repair itself when bones can even though they all belong to the same skeletal system?
In: Biology
The internal parts of teeth can repair themselves, but the enamel cannot be repaired by the body. This is because of how enamel is made. Special cells called ameloblasts surround teeth before the erupt from the gums. These cells make enamel, but they do it from the interior of the tooth moving outward, and in the process lose their connection to the bloodstream and die – they live long enough to coat the developing tooth in enamel and then are absorbed by the body just as the teeth erupt from the gums. So there’s no more enamel making cells let after the teeth are visible. And even if there were, they’d have to be UNDER the existing enamel to get nutrients, meaning if they continued to make enamel our teeth would constantly grow and need to be filed down.
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