Hard Tissue Research On Sub-Saharan Africans Of Known Life History

这个项目对于理解从骨骼的微观特征可以解释人类生活史的程度非常重要，为许多与矿化组织生物学、人类学和骨骼老化有关的基础科学倡议提供了相关的见解。与该项目相关的倡议可能会成为美国大学和马拉维大学之间建立教职员工和学生研究伙伴关系的典范。骨骼在其矿化框架中保留了个人生活史的签名，这一点是独一无二的。例如，一个人长得多快、多长时间和身体大小都是生命史特征，可以从一个人骨骼和牙齿的微观特征来评估。利用撒哈拉以南非洲班图血统和已知生活史的骨骼样本，研究人员正在测试关于骨骼和牙齿的微解剖特征与人体尺寸之间关系的新假设，并将发现与盎格鲁-凯尔特血统的人进行比较。牙釉质中的一条显微解剖生长线，即雷祖斯纹，代表了哺乳动物与身体大小有关的生物节律。在人类中，这种节律的范围大约为6-12天，据假设，体型较大的人更接近范围的6天，而较小的人更接近12天。这一假设是合理的，因为雷祖斯节律的条纹也是形成骨骼所需的相同的生物节律。在哺乳动物中，骨骼内微解剖的骨细胞间隙或骨陷窝的数量与生长速度和身体大小有关，因此节奏短的人每单位体积的骨陷窝应该比节律长而骨骼发育较慢的较小的人更多。这些想法正在用从马拉维大学医学院大体解剖身体上收集的骨骼和牙齿标本以及从发给捐赠者近亲的问卷中收集的生活史信息来验证。通过这样做，将建立第一个可公开访问的已知生活史的撒哈拉以南非洲人的骨和牙齿组织库。

This project is important for understanding the extent to which human life history can be interpreted from microscopic features in the skeleton, providing insights relevant to many basic science initiatives concerned with mineralized tissue biology, anthropology, and bone aging. The initiatives associated with this project will likely be a model for establishing faculty and student research partnerships among American universities and the University of Malawi.The skeleton is unique in preserving in its mineralized framework the signatures of an individual's life history. For instance, how fast one grows and for how long, and body size are life history characteristics that may be evaluated from microscopic features in one's bones and teeth. Employing a skeletal sample of sub-Saharan Africans of Bantu origin and known life history, the researchers are testing novel hypotheses regarding relationships between both bone and tooth microanatomical characteristics and human body size and compare the findings with people of Anglo-Celtic origin. A microanatomical growth line in enamel, the striae of Retzius, represents a biological rhythm related to body size in mammals. This rhythm can range in humans by ca. 6-12 days, and it is hypothesized that larger people are nearer the 6-day end of the range, while smaller people are nearer to 12-days. This hypothesis is reasonable because the striae of Retzius rhythm is also that same biological rhythm required to form bone. The number of microanatomical bone cell spaces, or lacunae, within bone is related to growth rate and body size in mammals, and so a person with a short rhythm should have more lacunae per unit volume of bone than a smaller person with a longer rhythm and slower bone development. These ideas are being tested using bone and tooth specimens collected from gross anatomy cadavers of the University of Malawi College of Medicine and life history information gleaned from questionnaires given to donor next of kin. In so doing, the first publicly accessible bone and tooth tissue bank of sub-Saharan Africans of known life history will be established.