As one of the research fronts of bioscience in the age of postgenome, epigenetic inheritance has close relationship with cell differentiation, ontogenesis and evolution, aging and the development of disease. In the previous study of developmental variations of tooth morphology, the research mainly focused on the mutation of related genes of tooth morphogenesis. But during the study on tooth phenotype of monozygotic twins, researchers found that the tooth phenotypes between monozygotic twins whose genes are identical are often different from each other. So they suggested that, environment, nutrition, living habits and many other non-genetic factors can interact with gene factor and form a mode of polygenetic inheritance which has an influence on the tooth morphogenesis of descendents. Morphological study, genetic model study and related-gene study are the mostly used research methods. In this review, the epigenetic phenomena involved in the morphogenesis of teeth and research progress were discussed.
