Under the direction of Dr. Susan Bloomfield, the Bone Biology Laboratory is involved in several lines of investigation centering on the adaptation of bone to exercise and to disuse, and interactions with nutritional intake and hormonal changes.

Since the laboratory's current funding is from the National Space Biomedical Research Institute, most current projects focus on mechanisms for the bone loss incurred with space flight, and how this bone loss might be attenuated by various exercise or pharmacological or hormonal agents, using rats and mice as experimental subjects.

These research results will have application to other types of disuse-induced bone loss (as with prolonged casting or bed rest) and to the bone loss incurred with osteoporosis. Other projects deal with the contribution of food restriction on space flight-induced bone loss and the role of various organic matrix proteins in bone function, using transgenic mouse models in collaboration with an NIH laboratory.

Techniques utilized in the BBL include histomorphometric analysis of bone structure and bone formation rate, peripheral quantitative computed tomography (pQCT) scanning, mechanical testing of bone samples (in collaboration with A&M's Dept. of Mechanical Engineering), and gene expression for important bone proteins (in collaboration with several laboratories).