In general, most people think of dentistry as a kind of art, and may hold a mental image of a practitioner skillfully drilling and filling teeth. However, such ideas come from previous decades. Molecular biology methods introduced in the 1980s have brought new understanding of life phenomena in terms of the activities of molecules and, as a result, dental research has drastically changed, with new therapies developed from analyses of molecular functions as well as understanding gained of the phenomena of heredity, immunity, and neurology at the molecular level.