Baylor College of Dentistry
Artistic Accolades
Research wins JDR Cover of the Year award
Research from Texas A&M University College of Dentistry has
not only begun to unravel the dogma on bone formation in the
temporomandibular joint. It’s also created a beautiful work of
art in the process.
That makes two eye-opening results for research from the lab
of Dr. Jerry Feng, professor in biomedical sciences. It started
when Feng, together with Dr. Robert Hinton, Regents Professor
emeritus, and Dr. Yan Jing, postdoctoral research associate,
suspected that the longstanding theory on bone formation in
the temporomandibular joint may not be accurate.
By Jennifer Eure Fuentes
The scientists’ means of proving this idea utilized confocal
microscopic images of transgenic mouse models, as cells tagged
with reporter genes revealed the merging of bone and cartilage
proteins seen in representative shades of red and green, one for
each type of protein. The image, which graced the cover of the
December 2015 JDR, was convincing in more ways than one.
The journal’s publications committee and the Joint International Association for Dental Research/American Association
for Dental Research Board of Directors selected it as the JDR
Cover of the Year, an honor that was presented this month during the IADR meeting in Seoul, South Korea.
The award-winning article prompted a
separate review, also published in the
December 2015 issue of the journal. In
it, the reviewers, from Harvard and the
Stowers Institute for Medical Research,
comment on the potential impact of the
findings: “Therefore, the work from
Jing, et al, provides new information
that could advance less invasive cranial
bone regeneration and repair.”
This image appeared on the cover of the Journal of Dental Research
This school of thought holds that chondrocytes — cartilage cells
— make cartilage, and bone cells make bone. Further, the common belief is that cartilage cells die prior to the formation of
bone. The researchers’ findings, published in the Journal of
Dental Research, revealed that contrary to these theories,
chondrocytes do not die. Rather, they directly transform into
bone cells.
Founded in 1905, Texas A&M University Baylor
College of Dentistry in Dallas is a college of the
Texas A&M Health Science Center. TAMBCD is a
nationally recognized center for oral health
sciences education, research, specialized patient care and continuing
dental education.
Jennifer Eure Fuentes is a communications specialist at Texas A&M Health
Science Center Baylor College of Dentistry. A 2006 graduate of Texas
Christian University, she has worked in the communications and editorial field
for five years.
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