Bisphosphonates decrease chondrocyte turnover at the growth plate and impact bone growth. Likewise vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) plays an important role in endochondral bone elongation by influencing chondrocyte turnover at the growth plate. To investigate whether the action of bisphosphonate on the growth plate works through VEGF, VEGF protein expression and isoform transcription i...

BACKGROUND The repetitive load to which the adolescent athlete's body is exposed during training and competition affects bone growth. In previous studies, abnormalities of the spine and extremities of adolescent athletes have been described on radiographs and this also applies to the hip. The cam deformity of the hip is an extension of the physeal plate and develops during the adolescent athlet...

Longitudinal bone growth is determined by endochondral ossification at the growth plate, which is located at both ends of long bones and vertebrae, and involves many systemic hormones and local regulators. C-type natriuretic peptide (CNP), a third member of the natriuretic peptide family, occurs at the growth plate and acts locally as a positive regulator of endochondral ossification through th...

Growth plate cartilage is central to the process of bone elongation. Chondrocytes originating within the resting zone of the growth plate proceed through a series of intermediate phenotypes: proliferating, prehypertrophic and hypertrophic, before reaching a terminally differentiated state. Disruption of this chondrocyte maturational sequence causes many skeletal abnormalities in poultry such as...

It is becoming common for plant scientists to develop projects that require the genotyping of large numbers of plants. The first step in any genotyping project is to collect a tissue sample from each individual plant. The traditional approach to this task is to sample plants one-at-a-time. If one wishes to genotype hundreds or thousands of individuals, however, using this strategy results in a ...