Maybe the title of this article is somewhat too poetic to be about science and dental teeth enamel. These realms sometimes need a dose of soulfulness to remind us all about what being human is at its core. Your typical dentist and research scientist may not be the most passionate individual on the planet but poetic licence is sometimes necessary to tell a story that folks are going to listen to. Are scientists seeing the fortunes of humans in teeth enamel a window to the soul of what we are really all about?

Science Delving Into Human Past, Present & Future Via The Looking Glass Of Tooth Enamel

Record keeping is what the digital age is all about, you know computers and their processing chips. Data is filed onto smaller and smaller semiconductor computer chips. These data processing units run the world in the 21C and they are getting finer and smaller all the time.

“Semiconductors are how electronic devices process, store and receive information. For instance, memory chips store data and software as binary code, digital chips manipulate the data based on the software instructions, and wireless chips receive data from high-frequency radio transmitters and convert them into electrical signals. These different chips work together under the control of software. Different software applications perform very different tasks, but they all work by switching the transistors that control the current.”
– The Conversation

Tooth enamel is another surface which can be read and the information stored there is biological data that scientists are now learning to read. In new research, just published, scientists have discovered two immune proteins embedded in human tooth enamel. These are providing a deeper understanding of the health of human populations in both ancient civilisations and in our modern communities.

“ “These proteins are present in tooth enamel, and they are something we can use to study the biological and potentially the emotional health of past human populations,” said Tammy Buonasera, an assistant professor at the University of Alaska Fairbanks and lead author of the paper. “Analysis of immune proteins in enamel has not been done before and this opens the door to studying disease and health in the past in a more targeted way than we can today.”
– University of Alaska Fairbanks. “Proteins in tooth enamel offer window into human wellness.” ScienceDaily, 19 September 2024.

Proteins Might Be The Pandora’s Box For Biological Insight Into Humanity

What we can learn about our human health from previous eras can offer huge scope for so many important things about who we are right now. It really is a bit like Pandora’s Box in that some stuff we might find may be frightening but at the same time hope burns bright too. The latest breakthroughs in biological research are invariably about life as information. DNA and RNA these are all great swathes of data, which we are learning to read despite its incredible complexity. Proteins are another biological dimension sparkling with information for us to process if we are able.

“Buonasera said this new way of looking at teeth could allow scientists a more detailed look at historical and prehistoric human experiences, for several reasons. The first is that teeth form during different windows in a human’s development, starting in utero and continuing through late adolescence or early adulthood. That growth over time in each tooth is analogous to the rings in a tree.”
– Science Daily

The enamel of teeth is tough and degrades much more slowly than other human tissue, therefore its timeline potential is vaster.

This looking glass into our past is akin to a time machine for scientists peering into what was actually occurring back then. We can know what the health of the individual was like and the stressors impacting upon him or her. Stress, disease and lifestyle are there for the trained eyes to see. Comparisons can then be made with modern lifestyles and other periods. Tooth enamel provides depth of time, which is a powerful thing. Serum proteins trapped in enamel tell us a story based on scientific data. This is not fake news or more wishful thinking but the real deal. Immune proteins within tooth enamel can give specific health information to scientists. Whereas structural stuff derived from bones or teeth are much more limited in what they can tell us about actual diseases. Proteins record responses to inflammation and illness.

Teeth Enamel A Long Playing Record Of Human Health

It is fascinating to ruminate upon the fate of the enamel of our teeth and how it is a long playing record of our health. This information sings the song of our lives and the lives of some long past. What we can learn from this data may well be more profound than anything else ever realised before. It may well open doors for historians, archaeologists, and social scientists. A new and deeper data set can change the way we see the past and this, then, affects how we experience the present, and how we tend to see the future. Medical scientists are getting excited about serum proteins in teeth enamel at the moment but the real ramifications of this may well prove to be far wider and far greater.

Cowboys & Indians In California

The story of how this study eventuated is one of “cowboys and Indians” or colonial settlers and Indigenous native Americans. The scientific team in question collaborated with local indigenous tribes from the California region. Utilising skeletons from the ancient ancestral Ohlone people from a mission outpost dating back to the 1700s they were given permission to study their teeth. Plus, they accessed European settlers from the late 1800s buried in the San Francisco cemetery. A modern perspective was supplied by military cadets donating their wisdom teeth to the project. Cross referencing of the levels of the 2 serum proteins in the teeth enamel was paired with the known history and experiences of the distinct populations.

“We see certain individuals, especially children, with very high levels of immunoglobulins, which the body uses to battle disease, and C-reactive protein, which people produce when they are under stress,” said Jelmer Eerkens, an anthropology professor at University of California, Davis and one of the corresponding authors on the paper. “It’s heartbreaking to think about children who may have lost their parents and family to disease, were thrown into a new cultural environment they didn’t understand, and how it affected their well-being.”
– Tammy Buonasera, assistant professor at the University of Alaska Fairbanks and lead author of the paper

Teeth have a lot to tell us beyond a pretty smile, it seems. All is not vanity, far from it on the trail of tears where American Native Indians are concerned. Colonial history is not something to be proud of when viewed from the perspective of those who were here before us. Who would have thought that a rekindling of knowledge about history would come forth via the dental portal. Passion and poetry are, perhaps, not quite so foreign to scientists and dentists as first presumed. Scientists seeing the fortunes of humans in teeth enamel is partly window to the soul, but mostly cold hard historical reality.

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