Figure 6

A model of molecular interactions in the odontoblast layer (ODL) of carious teeth. We map the inflammatory signal arising from ODL in response to caries as the network of previously demonstrated protein interactions, downstream from the differentially regulated gene products observed in this study. These activating or inhibitory interactions taken from the STRING and KEGG databases have been demonstrated for the same human proteins in other tissue and cell types. Size and color of node depiction for caries-induced genes in ODL were varied as in Figure 4. Intracellular signaling molecules (yellow) were mapped and linked to the transcription factors (magenta) and the resulting cellular responses (green). The network describes a parts list of component interactions to be assessed in future studies for the mechanistic basis of signal propagation from caries to pulpitis.