Studying the role of external stem cells in normal and compensatory bone growth

Long bones grow by forming a cartilage template that provides a scaffold to be replaced by mineralised bone. The production and replacement of cartilage has to be perfectly balanced in order to sustain growth, but the identity of the cells involved at early stages is not clear. We will use sophisticated mouse models to perform lineage tracing coupled to transcriptomic profiling of candidate stem cell populations that give rise to cartilage cells and surrounding tissues in embryonic long bones, in order to determine the contribution of external cells during normal bone growth and in response to transient perturbation. We will also ablate these candidate populations in the absence/presence of another injury, and test the impact on bone growth and recovery