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Comment
. 2019 Oct 7:8:e50210.
doi: 10.7554/eLife.50210.

Sensing the load

Nele Haelterman  1 , Joohyun Lim  1
Affiliations
Comment

Sensing the load

Nele Haelterman et al. Elife. .

Abstract

How does the skeleton detect and adapt to changes in the mechanical load it has to carry?

Keywords: Piezo1; bone formation; cell biology; human; human biology; mechanosensitive ion channel; mechanotransduction; medicine; mouse; osteoblast; osteocyte.

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Conflict of interest statement

NH, JL No competing interests declared

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.. How biomechanical loading stimulates bone formation.
In regions of bone that experience high biomechanical loads (red), the Piezo1 ion channel is activated in both osteoblasts (green) and osteocytes (olive). In osteocytes, the activation of Piezo1 leads to increased Wnt1 expression in a Yap/Taz-dependent manner. Wnt1 then activates the Wnt signaling pathway, which stimulates the formation of new bone (purple) by osteoblasts. In regions of bone that experience average or low biomechanical loads, the osteoblasts are inactive and there is no increase in bone mass.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Comment on

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