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结构的分析通常假设骨的形式和功能之间存在直接关系，即使骨对负荷的适应性反应机制尚未完全理解。该项目的主要目标是收集与年龄相关的比较数据，从一些位置的人类，黑猩猩和猕猴的颅后骨骼的骨骼的发展，以测试这些物种的运动发育相关的变化模式的解释模型。 本项目使用高分辨率计算机断层扫描（CT）扫描数据定量分析了人类、黑猩猩和猕猴个体发育过程中骨小梁微观结构和弹性特性的变化。运动负荷，体重，性别和年龄对骨小梁和皮质骨结构的发展的相对贡献进行检查，是运动个体发育的运动学和动力学分析的样本中的青少年现代人的结构变化，在人类运动的变化。 通过量化三种不同灵长类动物不同的运动行为和发育轨迹的骨结构的个体发育变化，更清楚地定义了一般发育过程，遗传模式和机械负荷环境对骨结构的作用。同时分析运动发育，骨结构和机械适应，以及物种内和物种间的变化是独一无二的，并产生了更具体的了解骨功能形态。最终，这项研究将提供洞察骨小梁的适应性反应的机械负荷，并将提供重要的信息，在哺乳动物骨骼骨小梁结构的功能效用。这项研究有助于在三所大学的本科生和研究生的培训，导致生产的高分辨率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，有直接的相关性，了解正常和病理运动系统的儿童和成人，并将在骨科，内科，骨代谢和生物力学，最后，这项研究的结果也将有助于了解骨质疏松症和骨关节炎的流行健康状况的相关数据。

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.