The earliest tetrapod limbs are polydactylous, morphologically varied and do not conform to an archetypal pattern. These discoveries, combined with the unravelling of limb developmental morphogenetic and regulatory mechanisms, have prompted a re-examination of vertebrate limb evolution. The rich fossil record of vertebrate fins/limbs, although restricted to skeletal tissues, exceeds the morphol...

This book is a publication of one hundred and one papers selected from those given at the Advanced Study Institute on structure and function of connective and skeletal tissue. This institute was held under the auspices of N.A.T.O. at St. Andrew's, Scotland, from June 15 to June 25, 1964. These papers embody much of the latest investigation and thinking of the internationally known participants ...

Annexins II, V and VI are highly expressed by hypertrophic and terminally differentiated growth plate chondrocytes and by osteoblasts. Because of the localization of annexins in areas of cartilage and bone mineralization, we hypothesized that these annexins play a regulatory role in the mineralization process. In this article we review the function of annexins II, V and VI in physiological mine...

Here an octogenarian voice from the past argues that the physiology of fascia, ligaments and tendons has strong and useful analogs in some general features of bone physiology, including the latter's tissue-level mechanostat. Such analogs could provide unusually important targets for future collagenous-tissue research. Even by 2002, this field's authorities seldom discussed those analogs so this...

Computational modeling has been increasingly applied to the field of tissue engineering and regenerative medicine. Where in early days computational models were used to better understand the biomechanical requirements of targeted tissues to be regenerated, recently, more and more models are formulated to combine such biomechanical requirements with cell fate predictions to aid in the design of ...

The family of secretory calcium-binding phosphoproteins (SCPPs) have been considered vital to skeletal tissue mineralization. However, most previous SCPP studies focused on phylogenetically distant animals but not on those closely related species. Here we provide novel insights into the coevolution of SCPP genes and fish scales in 10 species from Otophysi. According to their scale phenotypes, t...

Reduction of renal tissue in young rats regularly leads to a marked increase in the volume of the parathyroid glands. If partially nephrectomized rats are maintained on a low calcium diet, growth is stunted, and skeletal lesions are produced, of far greater severity than can be ascribed to the dietary calcium deficiency alone. The picture closely resembles that found in cases of renal rickets i...

THE TRANSFORMING GROWTH FACTOR-β (TGF-β) FAMILY is critically involved in the development and maintenance of skeletal tissues. In searches for factors with potent cartilage and bone inductive activities, TGF-β was isolated as cartilage-inducing factor (Seyedin et al. 1987), whereas bone morphogenetic proteins (BMPs) were isolated as factors able to induce cartilage and bone formation (Urist 196...