Cooper Lab
Principal Investigator: Kimberly Lynn Cooper
Institution: University of California San Diego (La Jolla, CA)
Primary Subfield: Molecular & Cell Bio
Recruitment Status: Inquire for rotation/fellowship opportunities
Research Focus
PROJECT SUMMARY: The mammalian skeleton is made up of hundreds of bones of a variety of shapes and sizes with lengths that can span an order of magnitude. Bone elongation in young animals takes place within cartilage growth plates at either end of each bone. These are composed of chondrocytes that rapidly and massively enlarge as they terminally differentiate and secrete large amounts of extracellular matrix, mostly collagen and proteoglycans, which becomes mineralized to form the scaffold of new bone. The greatest contribution to the daily rate of bone elongation is the explosive enlargement of these hypertrophic chondrocytes, up to 30-times their initial volume in about 12 hours, by a process that involves diluting cellular mass density by about three-fold. How do chondrocytes swell while maintaining typical metabolic functions, including manufacturing and secreting large proteins? Here, the team will apply two cutting edge imaging technologies to answer fundamentally important questions about the unusual cell biology that drives bone growth. Cells typically regulate their volume around a ‘set point’ by controlling the intracellular concentration of small molecule osmolytes; this…
Active NIH Awards
- 1R21AR086403-01A1: Understanding the cell biology of hypertrophic chondrocyte swelling and matrix production that drive long bone growth (2026)
- 5R01GM148640-04: Development of approaches to apply CRISPR/Cas9-mediated gene conversion to model complex genetic traits in mice (2026)
- 5R01GM148640-03: Development of approaches to apply CRISPR/Cas9-mediated gene conversion to model complex genetic traits in mice (2025)
- 5R01GM148640-02: Development of approaches to apply CRISPR/Cas9-mediated gene conversion to model complex genetic traits in mice (2024)
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