Karabucak, Bekir
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Publication Gingival Taste Bud Papillae Associated with Retromolar Salivary Gland(2019-10-28) Nguyen, Quan; Tizzano, Marco; Karabucak, Bekir; Beck Coburn, GraceTaste in the gustatory system allows to distinguish between safe and harmful food, and to gauge its nutritional value. Digestive enzymes in saliva begin to dissolve food into base chemicals that are detected by taste buds containing three different cell types involved in the perception of the five basic tastes. Von Ebner's glands, found adjacent to the moats surrounding the circumvallate (CV) and foliate papillae, are exocrine salivary glands that secrete digestive enzymes and presumably flush material out of the papillae. Recently, we rediscovered and characterized anatomically and molecularly a chemosensory structure in the mouse oral cavity consisting of unorganized taste buds associated with ducts and a gland at the rear of the mandible, distal to the last molar and anterior to the ascending ramus. These taste buds appear to be the same ones first described by Iida in 1983, Miller in 1984, and characterized for sensory responses by Travers et al. in 1995 (Miller and Smith 1984, Travers and Norgren 1995). Here we used immunohistochemistry and RT-PCR to characterize this gingival chemosensory structure, consisting of taste buds and a minor salivary gland. Similar to the CV and foliate papillae, this novel retromolar chemosensory structure contains taste buds surrounding the orifice of ducts originating from a salivary gland (morphologically similar to the Von Ebner's glands). This salivary gland is located below the mucosa of the retromolar gap, extending posteriorly in the retromolar trigone. Above the gland and ducts, taste buds are positioned on the surface of the retromolar gingival epithelium, surrounding the duct orifices. We determined that these taste buds have chemosensory features expressing many canonical taste signaling elements, including taste receptors. The composition of the secretions from the retromolar gland is unknown. The retromolar taste buds are responsible for a small portion of sensory gustatory perception (Travers and Norgren 1995). Interestingly, patients have reported taste changes following procedures involving third molar extraction, possibly due to the disruption of the retromolar tissue (Shafer, Frank et al. 1999, Akal, Kucukyavuz et al. 2004, Klasser, Utsman et al. 2008, Ridaura-Ruiz, Figueiredo et al. 2012). The retromolar taste structure possibly plays a role in taste perception and represents a potential novel pharmacological target for taste or dry mouth disorders.Publication Microrobotics for Precision Biofilm Diagnostics and Treatment(The Authors, 2022-04-21) Babeer, Alaa; Oh, M.J.; Ren, Sijie; Liu, Y.; Marques, F.; Poly, A.; Karabucak, Bekir; Steager, Edward B; Koo, HyunAdvances in small-scale robotics and nanotechnology are providing previously unimagined opportunities for new diagnostic and therapeutic approaches with high precision, control, and efficiency. We designed microrobots for tetherless biofilm treatment and retrieval using iron oxide nanoparticles (NPs) with dual catalytic-magnetic functionality as building blocks. We show 2 distinct microrobotic platforms. The first system is formed from NPs that assemble into aggregated microswarms under magnetic fields that can be controlled to disrupt and retrieve biofilm samples for microbial analysis. The second platform is composed of 3-dimensional (3D) micromolded opacifier-infused soft helicoids with embedded catalytic-magnetic NPs that can be visualized via existing radiographic imaging techniques and controlled magnetically inside the root canal, uninterrupted by the soft and hard tissues surrounding the teeth in an ex vivo model. These microrobots placed inside the root canal can remove biofilms and be efficiently guided with microscale precision. The proof-of-concept paradigm described here can be adapted to target difficult-to-reach anatomical spaces in other natural and implanted surfaces in an automated and tether-free manner.