Doctoral Dissertation Research: Impacts of early life adversity on bone growth and maintenance

博士论文研究：早年逆境对骨骼生长和维持的影响

• 批准号: 2120962
• 负责人: Shannon McFarlin
• 金额: $ 1.67万
• 依托单位: George Washington University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2021
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2021-08-15 至 2023-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2120962&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; Impacts; early

This award is funded in whole or in part under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (Public Law 117-2).Adversity in early life has wide-ranging effects on individual growth and development. Research has documented important deficits in growth, especially in the limbs. Yet, changes induced by early life adversity are almost certainly expressed in other aspects of skeletal morphology. This doctoral dissertation research project uses life history theory to investigate how energetic trade-offs impact bone growth as well as bone structure and dynamic remodeling to develop a more complete understanding of the effects of early life condition on growth and development outcomes. These insights also shed light on more general drivers of individual variation and the evolutionary and biological mechanisms that enable such variation. The project supports the training and mentorship of diverse undergraduate and graduate students. Results will be shared via publications, outreach, and educational efforts to ensure broad dissemination. The research project investigates these issues in primates with well documented variation in growth and development outcomes and in socio-ecological environments during development. The investigators test the hypothesis that individuals born into high quality early life conditions (moderate rainfall, mothers of high dominance rank) will have improved markers of growth and structural and material properties of bone. The investigators test the additional hypothesis that the magnitude of impacts will be stronger in comparison to individuals with multiple sources of early life adversity. The investigators test the hypotheses via analysis of long bone lengths, cross-sectional geometric properties of bone, bone porosity, and parameters of bone remodeling. The study is novel in its integration of standard whole bone measurements with investigations of bone’s internal microscopic structural properties. Findings leverage bone’s ability to act as a window into an individual’s developmental past, providing insight into how the skeleton responds to environments throughout life and more general insights into the primate evolutionary biology.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

该奖项全部或部分根据2021年美国救援计划法案（公法117-2）资助。早期生活中的逆境对个人的成长和发展有广泛的影响。研究已经证明了严重的生长缺陷，特别是在四肢。然而，早期生活逆境引起的变化几乎肯定会在骨骼形态的其他方面表达。这个博士论文研究项目使用生命史理论来研究能量权衡如何影响骨生长以及骨结构和动态重塑，以更全面地了解早期生活条件对生长和发育结果的影响。这些见解还揭示了个体变异的更普遍的驱动因素以及实现这种变异的进化和生物机制。该项目支持培训和指导不同的本科生和研究生。将通过出版物、外联和教育工作分享成果，以确保广泛传播。该研究项目调查了灵长类动物的这些问题，这些灵长类动物在生长和发育结果以及发育过程中的社会生态环境方面存在有据可查的变化。研究人员测试了这样一种假设，即出生于高质量早期生活条件（中等降雨量，高统治地位的母亲）的个体将具有更好的生长标记以及骨骼的结构和材料特性。研究人员测试了额外的假设，即与具有多种早期生活逆境来源的个人相比，影响的程度将更强。研究人员通过分析长骨长度、骨的横截面几何特性、骨孔隙度和骨重建参数来检验假设。这项研究是新颖的，它整合了标准的全骨测量与骨的内部微观结构特性的研究。研究结果利用骨骼的能力，作为一个窗口，一个人的发展的过去，提供洞察骨骼如何响应环境在整个生命和更普遍的见解灵长类动物进化生物学。这个奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并已被认为是值得支持的评估使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准。