Network structures in bones during development

• Grant number: 13/19082-7
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate
• Start date: November 01, 2013
• End date: July 31, 2017
• Field of knowledge: Interdisciplinary Subjects
• Principal Investigator: Luciano da Fontoura Costa
• Grantee: Cynthia Martins Villar Couto
• Host Institution: Instituto de Física de São Carlos (IFSC). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Carlos , SP, Brazil

Abstract

Bone tissue is the main constituent of the vertebrate skeleton, being a support for non-rigid portions of the body, as well as protection for vital organs. Two processes guide skeletal development: endochondral and intramembranous ossification. During endochondral ossification, blood vessels invade the space previously occupied by cartilage, spread out and eventually acquire a network structure, subsequently being delimited by channels made by the bone matrix. The events that produce the different stages in the bone growth plate are regulated by signaling networks involving regulation of genes, besides that, proteins from several families were related to the growth of the skeleton. The arrangement of bones' vascular canals, and the network of gene interactions, can be investigated using the theory of complex networks. The concepts that will be analyzed are crucial to the comprehension of biological systems. We will study these aspects in long bones of chicken (Gallus gallus) and mice (Mus musculus) by analyzing global gene expression data deposited in databases, and graphs extracted from 3D images acquired from vascular tubules bones. These analyzes will be done in normal animal strains along the time, and also compared in animal strains affected by bone disease. Preliminary results were generated, showing that it is possible to construct a map correlation using data from the gene expression of bone cells.

Scientific publications

(References retrieved automatically from Web of Science and SciELO through information on FAPESP grants and their corresponding numbers as mentioned in the publications by the authors)

VILLAR COUTO, CYNTHIA MARTINS; COMIN, CESAR HENRIQUE; COSTA, LUCIANO DA FONTOURA. Effects of threshold on the topology of gene co-expression networks. MOLECULAR BIOSYSTEMS, v. 13, n. 10, p. 2024-2035, OCT 2017. (13/19082-7, 11/50761-2, 15/18942-8)

Academic Publications

(References retrieved automatically from State of São Paulo Research Institutions)

COUTO, Cynthia Martins Villar. Network structures in bones. 2017. Doctoral Thesis - Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Instituto de Matemática e Estatística (IME/SBI) São Paulo.