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From our analysis, we found the following most relevant:Karsenty has ushered in the idea that bone is involved in communicating with other tissues in the body that wasn't really understood or investigated before."
We now know that bones communicate by participating in a network of signals to other organs through producing their own hormones, proteins that circulate in the blood. Karsenty's mice eventually led him to realise that osteocalcin was in fact one such hormone, and understanding its links to regulating so many of these functions could have future implications in terms of public health interventions.
"The idea that bone could produce a hormone affecting metabolism or even your liver initially came as a bit of a shock," says FerronHe suspected that it played a crucial role in bone remodelling - the process by which our bones continuously remove and create new tissue - which enables us to grow during childhood and adolescence, and also recover from injuries.
Intending to study this, he conducted a genetic knockout experiment, removing the gene responsible for osteocalcin from mice.