Collaborative Research: Trabecular bone ontogeny and locomotor development in humans and non-human primates

对现存和已灭绝灵长类动物骨骼结构的分析通常假设骨骼形态和功能之间存在直接关系，尽管骨骼对负荷的适应性反应机制尚不完全清楚。该项目的主要目标是从人类、黑猩猩和猕猴的颅后骨骼的许多位置收集与年龄相关的骨骼发育数据，以测试这些物种中与运动发育相关的变化模式的解释模型。本项目利用高分辨率计算机断层扫描（CT）对人类、黑猩猩和猕猴颅骨后骨骼进行扫描，量化了个体发育过程中小梁骨微观结构和弹性特性的变化。研究了运动负荷、体重、性别和年龄对骨小梁和骨皮质结构发育的相对影响，以及对青少年现代人类运动个体发育的运动学和动力学分析，以将结构变化与人类运动变化联系起来。通过对具有不同运动行为和发育轨迹的三种不同灵长类动物骨骼结构的个体发生变化进行量化，可以更清楚地定义一般发育过程、遗传模式和机械负荷环境对骨骼结构的作用。同时分析运动发育，骨骼结构和机械适应，以及物种内部和物种之间的差异是独特的，并产生了对骨骼功能形态的更具体的理解。最终，本研究将深入了解骨小梁对机械载荷的适应性反应，并将为哺乳动物骨骼中骨小梁结构的功能效用提供重要信息。这项研究有助于三所大学的本科生和研究生的培训，产生了一个高分辨率CT和运动学数据的大型比较数据集，供其他研究人员使用，并纳入生物人类学课程，与理解儿童和成人的正常和病理运动系统直接相关，并将在骨科，内科，骨代谢，以及生物力学，最后，这项研究的结果也将为了解骨质疏松症和骨关节炎的普遍健康状况提供相关数据。

Analyses of bone structure in living and extinct primates typically assume a direct relationship between bone form and function even though the mechanisms of bone's adaptive response to loads is not fully understood. The primary objective of this project is collecting comparative age-related data on the development of bone from a number of locations in the postcranial skeleton of humans, chimpanzees, and macaques to test an explanatory model for the patterns of change associated with locomotor development in these species. This project quantifies the changes in trabecular bone microstructure and elastic properties during ontogeny in humans, chimpanzees, and macaques using high-resolution computed tomography (CT) scan data in the postcranial skeleton. The relative contributions of locomotor loading, body mass, sex, and age on the development of trabecular and cortical bone structure are examined, as are kinematic and kinetic analyses of locomotor ontogeny in a sample of juvenile modern humans to relate structural changes to changes in locomotion in humans. By quantifying the ontogenetic changes in bone structure across three different primates with divergent locomotor behaviors and developmental trajectories, the role of general developmental processes, genetic patterning, and the mechanical loading environment on bone structure are more clearly defined. The simultaneous analysis of locomotor development, bone structural and mechanical adaptations, and within and between species variation is unique and produces a more concrete understanding of bone functional morphology. Ultimately, this study will provide insight into the adaptive response of trabecular bone to mechanical loads and will provide important information regarding the functional utility of trabecular bone structure in the mammalian skeleton. This study contributes to the training of undergraduate and graduate students at three universities, result in the production of a large comparative dataset of high-resolution CT and kinematic data for use by other researchers and for incorporation into the biological anthropology curriculum, has direct relevance for understanding the normal and pathological locomotor system in children and adults and will be of broad interest in orthopedics, internal medicine, bone metabolism, and biomechanics, and, finally, the results of this study will also contribute relevant data to the understanding of the prevalent health conditions of osteoporosis and osteoarthritis.