Lighting up Skeletal Biology by Fluorescent Imaging

Skeletal development and bone homeostasis are dynamic but coordinated cellular process that involves proliferation, migration and differentiation. Molecular biology and genome science promoted this realm of biomedical science by elucidating cell lineages and essential molecules and their interactions. Fluorescence live imaging has made it possible to quantitatively analyze multi-cellular processes in 4 dimensions, thus providing coherent understanding of distinct levels of description from molecular levels to the tissue, organ and organism. Application of this approach has given further insight into and comprehension of the dynamic process of, not a mere description of the molecular hierarchy, skeletal biology. In this review paper, how fluorescent imaging has shed new light on the skeletal biology will be discussed. We introduce several current topics in the application of fluorescent imaging on skeletal patterning, morphometry of bone cells and cellular behavior in bone marrow.