English

Investigation of bone resorption within a cortical basic multicellular unit using a lattice-based computational model

Tissues and Organs 2015-03-19 v3 Biological Physics Medical Physics Cell Behavior

Abstract

In this paper we develop a lattice-based computational model focused on bone resorption by osteoclasts in a single cortical basic multicellular unit (BMU). Our model takes into account the interaction of osteoclasts with the bone matrix, the interaction of osteoclasts with each other, the generation of osteoclasts from a growing blood vessel, and the renewal of osteoclast nuclei by cell fusion. All these features are shown to strongly influence the geometrical properties of the developing resorption cavity including its size, shape and progression rate, and are also shown to influence the distribution, resorption pattern and trajectories of individual osteoclasts within the BMU. We demonstrate that for certain parameter combinations, resorption cavity shapes can be recovered from the computational model that closely resemble resorption cavity shapes observed from microCT imaging of human cortical bone.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1105.5093,
  title  = {Investigation of bone resorption within a cortical basic multicellular unit using a lattice-based computational model},
  author = {P. R. Buenzli and J. Jeon and P. Pivonka and D. W. Smith and P. T. Cummings},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1105.5093},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

17 pages, 11 figures, 1 table. Revised version: paper entirely rewritten for a more biology-oriented readership. Technical points of model description now in Appendix. Addition of two new figures (Fig. 5 and Fig. 9) and removal of former Fig. 4

R2 v1 2026-06-21T18:12:38.712Z