Organ cultures and kidney-capsule grafting of tooth germs.

The study of organogenesis allows investigation of a variety of basic biological processes in the context of the intact organ. The ability to analyze teeth ex vivo during development has emerged as a powerful tool to understand how teeth are constructed and the signaling pathways that regulate these developmental processes. Here, we describe in detail our protocols for organ culture and kidney-capsule grafting of mouse tooth germs. These techniques allow us to reproduce the developmental process of tooth germs and estimate the effect of specific genes ex vivo, as well as are a tool for studies on the mechanisms of normal and abnormal tooth morphogenesis. They may also be applied to studies on other aspects of developmental biology and regenerative medicine.