Bone Abstracts

Formation and growth of long bones occur through the process of endochondral ossification, which depends on proliferation and hypertrophy of chondrocytes in growth cartilage. In a subtractive hybridization study of equine cartilage, we recently identified a number of genes, the roles of which in growth cartilage have not been characterized. A subset of these genes was found to be differentially expressed between the zones of equine growth cartilage. The genes encoding ATPase H...

In a recent unbiased transcriptomic study of genes associated with equine osteochondrosis, we identified several novel cartilage genes. The current study was undertaken to determine whether these genes are regulated during chondrocyte hypertrophy, and to identify novel hypertrophy-associated genes for further study in vitro. Gene expression was investigated by quantitative PCR (qPCR) in different zones of growth cartilage microdissected from equine foetal metatarsal b...