Protein helps cartilage cells breathe easy when oxygen is scarce
Blood is red because it’s brimming with the oxygen-toting protein hemoglobin, but scientists have long wondered whether cells outside of the bloodstream depend on this protein as well. Now, a team of researchers from China has demonstrated that cartilage-making cells called chondrocytes manufacture and use hemoglobin, perhaps to help them survive in cartilage’s oxygen-poor environment.
“I admire that they picked up on an unusual finding and expanded it into a comprehensive story,” adds bone biologist Noriaki Ono of the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, who also had no role in the study. Scientists had not previously reported finding hemoglobin in chondrocytes. In 2017, however, pathologist Feng Zhang of the Fourth Military Medical University was studying bone development in young mice when he noticed some unusual blobs in chondrocytes from the animals’ growth plates, the cartilaginous layers near the ends of some bones that allow them to lengthen. Not only did the structures resemble red blood cells, but they were also rich in hemoglobin.
Next, the scientists repeated the experiment in rodents with reduced amounts of hemoglobin only in their chondrocytes. Once again, the cells died in droves in the growth plates, the researchers revealed earlier this month inTo probe how hemoglobin might protect chondrocytes, the team grew unaltered and genetically modified growth plate cells in a low-oxygen environment.
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