The progressive ankylosis gene (ank) is a transmembrane protein that transports intracellular pyrophosphate to the extracellular milieu. Human mutations of ank lead to craniometaphyseal dysplasia, a disease which is characterized by the overgrowth of craniofacial bones and osteopenia in long bones, suggesting that ANK plays a regulatory role in osteoblast differentiation. To determine the role ...

BACKGROUND Mechanical stimulation of bone increases bone mass and fracture healing, at least in part, through increases in proliferation of osteoblasts and osteoprogenitor cells. Researchers have previously performed in vitro studies of ultrasound-induced osteoblast proliferation but mostly used fixed ultrasound settings and have reported widely varying and inconclusive results. Here we critica...

We examined the osteoblast/osteocyte expression and function of polycystin-1 (PC1), a transmembrane protein that is a component of the polycystin-2 (PC2)-ciliary mechano-sensor complex in renal epithelial cells. We found that MC3T3-E1 osteoblasts and MLO-Y4 osteocytes express transcripts for PC1, PC2, and the ciliary proteins Tg737 and Kif3a. Immunohistochemical analysis detected cilia-like str...

The rate of osteoblast apoptosis is a critical determinant of the rate of bone formation. Because the calcium-binding protein calbindin-D(28k) has anti-apoptotic properties in neuronal cells and lymphocytes, we searched for the presence of this protein in osteoblastic cells and investigated whether it can modify their response to proapoptotic signals. Calbindin-D(28K) was expressed at low level...

Recent studies have shown that the multifunctional protein calreticulin can localize to the cell nucleus and regulate gene transcription via its ability to bind a protein motif in the DNA-binding domain of nuclear hormone receptors. A number of known modulators of bone cell function, including vitamin D, act through this receptor family, suggesting that calreticulin may regulate their action in...

Osteoblast maturation is a multistep series of events characterized by an integrated cascade of gene expression that are accompanied by specific phenotypic alterations. To find new osteoblast-related genes we cloned differentially expressed cDNAs characteristic of specific differentiation stages in the mouse osteoblast-like MC3T3-E1 cells by a differential display method. We identified a novel ...

This study investigated the effect of biodegradable Mg and Mg alloys on selected properties of MC3T3-E1 cells elicited by direct cell/material interaction. The chemical composition and morphology of the surface of Mg and Mg based alloys (Mg2Ag and Mg10Gd) were analysed by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and EDX, following corrosion in cell culture medium for 1, 2, 3 and 8 days. The most pron...