Congratulations to Saima whose paper was published in Royal Society Open Science. In the paper, we investigate how mechanical loading from fetal movements affects emergence and maturation of the different types of collagen in the developing skeleton. We found that most collagens were affected by the lack of muscle loading, with collagens II, X and XI being particularly abnormal when skeletal muscle was absent. Using our in vitro bioreactor culture system, we demonstrated that mechanical loading directly modulates the spatial localization and structure of collagens II and X, and excitingly, that mechanical loading in vitro could rescue aspects of the development of collagens II and X from the effects of fetal immobility.
Saima’s imaging is really beautiful- check out the full paper which is available open access here.
Developmental Biomechanics 