Graduate Programs in the Life Sciences

Research Focus

• Understand fundamental control mechanisms at different levels of skeletal integration-from the molecular to the cellular to that of the individual-that are responsible for co-ordinated long bone growth

• Perturbations of normal growth, possiblities and limitations of intervention procedures for the correction of abnormalities of long bone growth

• analysis of chondrocytic control of diffrential bone growth in the postnatal animal
• analysis of altered growth plate activity during naturally occuring and experimentally induced perturbations of growth, including spontaneous disease.
• analysis of a variety of transgenic and knockout mutants that have specific perturbations leading to abnormal growth plate activity
• analysis of radiation-induced damage to rat growth plates as a model to study radiation effects and possible treatments of bone tumors

• a study of mechanical modulation of growth plate activity as a model of scoliosis in children 
• a study of the vascular environment of the growth plate using multi-phonton microscopy