Growing Planes

Our bones grow from points called growth plates, which are located on each end of bones, just below our joints. Specialised cells produce cartilage on one side of the growth plate that becomes calcified and pushes the end of the bone upwards. Our bones also have superstructures – ridges, elevations and projections, located at specific places along the bone, which allow tendons and ligaments to attach. But little is known about how a bone’s growth is regulated during development. Pictured are colour-coded statistical maps used to mathematically analyse slices of femurs [thigh bones]. Regions of the bone core that change very little are shown in red; regions that aren’t highly preserved are shown in blue. Bones were seen to grow to maintain isometry – the growth at each end of the bone is unique, specific and balanced, allowing the superstructures to uphold their approximate position.

Written by Katie Panteli

Katie Panteli

Writer

Katie, a Warwick Biomed graduate, works for a science-publishing house in London with some of the world's most respected scientific minds. She's most interested in human biology, anything and everything that makes us tick.

• Image from work by Tomer Stern and colleagues
• Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel
• Originally published under a Creative Commons Licence (BY 4.0)
• Published in PLOS Biology, August 2015