The Biological Basis of Joint Ankylosis: Studies in the ank/ank Mouse
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The first objective of my work was to use the ank/ank (progressive ankylosis) mutant mice, which have a deficiency in inorganic pyrophosphate transport, to address the role of Ank in joint ankylosis. I observed the presence of hypertrophic chondrocytes in the uncalcified ank/ank mice articular cartilage. This novel phenotype is likely due to a dysregulation of chondrocyte maturation as these chondrocytes expressed hypertrophic chondrocyte markers (collagen type X and tissue non-specific alkaline phosphatase). I also showed by immunohistochemical staining that beta-catenin expression was upregulated and localized in the nuclei of articular ank/ank chondrocytes, suggesting activation of Wnt/beta-catenin signaling in these chondrocytes.\nThe second objective was to use ank/ank mice as an informative model for understanding ankylosis mechanisms in human ankylosing spondylitis (AS) patients, as WNT/beta-catenin signaling plays an important role in ankylosis in AS patients. We attempted rescue of joint ankylosis in ank/ank mice by gene transfer of noggin, an antagonist of BMP signaling. Paradoxically, noggin-treated ank/ank mice had accelerated ankylosis, as evidenced by joint pathology and IHC staining of beta-catenin showed more intense signals in the spinal chondrocytes of the treated mice. As noggin and sclerostin (an antagonist of beta-catenin signaling) form a mutually inhibitory complex, we hypothesize that the formation of this complex results in relieving suppression of both beta-catenin and BMP signaling, leading to more severe ankylosis in ank/ank mice.\nBy quantitative molecular imaging, I have demonstrated that ankylosis in these mutant mice developed simultaneously in distal and axial joint, instead of being a centripetal process.\nIn summary, I have made three original observations in the ank/ank mice: the hypertrophic chondrocyte phenotype; activation of beta-catenin signaling and the simultaneous development of ankylosis in distal and axial joints. These mutant mice serve as valuable model for pre-clinical studies which enable modeling and testing of novel anti-ankylosis treatments.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".