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

对现存和灭绝灵长类动物的骨骼结构的分析通常假定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的机制并不完全清楚。这个项目的主要目标是从人类、黑猩猩和猕猴的后颅骨中收集与年龄相关的骨骼发育的比较数据，以测试这些物种与运动发育相关的变化模式的解释模型。该项目利用后颅骨的高分辨率CT扫描数据，量化了人类、黑猩猩和猕猴个体发育过程中骨小梁微结构和弹性特性的变化。研究了运动负荷、体质量、性别和年龄对骨小梁和皮质骨结构发育的相对贡献，以及对现代青少年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。通过量化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育变化，更清楚地定义了一般发育过程、遗传模式和机械载荷环境对骨结构的作用。同时分析运动发育、骨骼结构和力学适应以及物种内和物种间的差异是独一无二的，并产生了对骨骼功能形态的更具体的理解。最终，这项研究将深入了解松质骨对机械负荷的适应性反应，并将提供有关松质骨结构在哺乳动物骨骼中的功能用途的重要信息。这项研究有助于三所大学的本科生和研究生的培训，产生大量高分辨率CT和运动学数据的比较数据集，供其他研究人员使用，并纳入生物人类学课程，对于了解儿童和成人的正常和病理运动系统具有直接相关性，将对骨科、内科、骨代谢和生物力学产生广泛的兴趣，最后，本研究的结果还将有助于了解骨质疏松症和骨关节炎的普遍健康状况。

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.