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Feature Story | Argonne National Laboratory

APS research on shark vertebrae could improve treatment of bone disease in humans

Argonne National Laboratory’s storied Advanced Photon Source, home to thousands of experiments through the years, is currently aiding in a study of shark spines — one that could shed light on human bones.

The U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Photon Source (APS) at Argonne National Laboratory has facilitated tens of thousands of experiments across nearly every conceivable area of scientific research since it first saw light more than two decades ago.

But it wasn’t until earlier this year that the storied facility was used to study shark vertebrae in an experiment that one Northwestern University researcher hopes will shed light on the functionality of human bone and cartilage.

Shark spines constantly flex when they swim, said Stuart R. Stock, a materials scientist and faculty member of Northwestern’s Feinberg School of Medicine. Yet they remain surprisingly resilient throughout the fish’s lifetime, he said.

Human bones, however, cannot endure the same kind of bending and become more fragile as people age.

Stock is using the APS to better understand shark vertebrae’s formation and strength. He wants to know how the animal’s tissue develops and how it functions when the animal swims.

One of the ways he’s doing this is through high resolution, 3D X-ray imaging.

I have a feeling we are going to learn something very crucial about how bones and cartilage form. I think it’s going to open a window into understanding what bone and cartilage do.” — Stuart Stock, materials scientist and faculty member of Northwestern’s Feinberg School of Medicine

The information he obtains might one day help scientists develop better treatments for bone diseases such as osteoporosis.

I believe there is a lot to learn here,” Stock said. I’m excited about what I’m going to find.”

The laboratory is equally enthusiastic about his research.

Our users provide challenging scientific problems that drive our instrument development, allowing us to constantly improve the beamline,” said APS physicist Francesco De Carlo. Such collaborations are tremendously beneficial for both the scientists and the laboratory.”

Argonne’s APS, which works like a giant X-ray, is a DOE Office of Science User Facility. It produces extremely bright, focused X-rays that peer through dense materials and illuminate matter at the molecular level. By way of comparison, the X-rays produced at today’s APS are up to one billion times brighter than the X-rays produced in a typical dentist office.

Stock called the APS a world-class facility, adding that the staff is exceptional.

The people I work with there are incredibly helpful,” he said. They stick with you through the entire process — from the initial experiment to publication — which makes the facility a stand-out among all others.”

Stock has spent his career working in the area of X-ray scattering and tomography, developing new techniques to study how bone mineral and bone-mineralized collagen respond to stress.

Most of my work is actually in animal bones,” he said. But animal bones behave much like human bones and are far easier to obtain and study.”

Prof. Stuart Stock (Northwestern University) displays the shark spine sample prior to imaging studies using high-brightness X-rays at the X-ray Science Division beamline 2-BM research station at the Advanced Photon Source. (Image by Argonne National Laboratory.)

Stock, who started using the APS for the shark project earlier this summer, first became interested in the animal’s vertebrae three years ago after learning about a colleague’s experiment with the fish.

It’s the kind of thing as a scientist where you find there is an area open to discovery, one that might prove analogous to research in humans,” he said.

Stock has been using X-ray imaging since the early 2000s: Two years ago, he used a different APS beamline to see inside an Egyptian mummy without disturbing its ancient wrapping. He found, among many other discoveries, a piece of calcite above the mummy’s abdomen.

Stock believes it might have been part of an ancient burial ritual. Similarly, Stock hopes the shark study will reveal unexpected and exciting results.

I have a feeling we are going to learn something very crucial about how bones and cartilage form,” he said. I think it’s going to open a window into understanding what bone and cartilage do.”

All of this information will help doctors better serve people with degenerative bone disease, he said, as current diagnosis and treatment methods are lacking.

Right now, if we look at how we diagnose osteoporosis — a disease that will afflict most of the population, including men — we measure the amount of mineral in the bone by shining X-rays through the forearm,” Stock said. But it’s not that great a predictor: If it were, it would be right 95 percent of the time and it’s not.”

Patients would be better served if doctors had a greater understanding of the 3D arrangement of the minerals within bones, he said. But even this has its limitations.

We’re still missing something,” Stock said. And every time we get new knowledge in this area, it will ultimately help us develop better replacement tissue, allowing more success clinically.”

Prof. Stuart Stock (Northwestern University) studies an image of a shark spine sample, obtained using high-brightness X-rays at the X-ray Science Division beamline 2-BM research station at the Advanced Photon Source. (Image by Argonne National Laboratory.)

Stock is collaborating with the Apex Predators Program, part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The shark spine samples were from sharks that died of natural causes.

No sharks — or researchers — were harmed in the making of this science.

About the Advanced Photon Source

The U. S. Department of Energy Office of Science’s Advanced Photon Source (APS) at Argonne National Laboratory is one of the world’s most productive X-ray light source facilities. The APS provides high-brightness X-ray beams to a diverse community of researchers in materials science, chemistry, condensed matter physics, the life and environmental sciences, and applied research. These X-rays are ideally suited for explorations of materials and biological structures; elemental distribution; chemical, magnetic, electronic states; and a wide range of technologically important engineering systems from batteries to fuel injector sprays, all of which are the foundations of our nation’s economic, technological, and physical well-being. Each year, more than 5,000 researchers use the APS to produce over 2,000 publications detailing impactful discoveries, and solve more vital biological protein structures than users of any other X-ray light source research facility. APS scientists and engineers innovate technology that is at the heart of advancing accelerator and light-source operations. This includes the insertion devices that produce extreme-brightness X-rays prized by researchers, lenses that focus the X-rays down to a few nanometers, instrumentation that maximizes the way the X-rays interact with samples being studied, and software that gathers and manages the massive quantity of data resulting from discovery research at the APS.

This research used resources of the Advanced Photon Source, a U.S. DOE Office of Science User Facility operated for the DOE Office of Science by Argonne National Laboratory under Contract No. DE-AC02-06CH11357.

Argonne National Laboratory seeks solutions to pressing national problems in science and technology. The nation’s first national laboratory, Argonne conducts leading-edge basic and applied scientific research in virtually every scientific discipline. Argonne researchers work closely with researchers from hundreds of companies, universities, and federal, state and municipal agencies to help them solve their specific problems, advance America’s scientific leadership and prepare the nation for a better future. With employees from more than 60 nations, Argonne is managed by UChicago Argonne, LLC for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science.

The U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, visit https://​ener​gy​.gov/​s​c​ience.