Differential aging of growth plate cartilage underlies differences in bone length and thus helps determine skeletal proportions.

ABSTRACT: Bones at different anatomical locations vary dramatically in size. For example, human femurs are 20-fold longer than the phalanges in the fingers and toes. The mechanisms responsible for these size differences are poorly understood. Bone elongation occurs at the growth plates and advances rapidly in early life but then progressively slows due to a developmental program termed "growth plate senescence." This developmental program includes declines in cell proliferation and hypertrophy, depletion of cells in all growth plate zones, and extensive underlying changes in the expression of growth-regulating genes. Here, we show evidence that these functional, structural, and molecular senescent changes occur earlier in the growth plates of smaller bones (metacarpals, phalanges) than in the growth

SUBMITTER: Lui JC 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6056026 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature