Original story from Johns Hopkins Medicine (MD, USA). The first comprehensive single-cell atlas of bone-innervating sensory neurons has identified their dual role in reporting and repairing bone damage, providing a potential target for drugs that might enhance bone healing. When a house catches on fire, we assume that a smoke alarm inside will serve one purpose and one purpose only: warn the occupants of danger. But imagine if the device could transform into something that could fight the fire as well. In a new study in Science, a multi-institutional team led by researchers at Johns Hopkins Medicine has shown in mice that the body’s ‘pain alarms’ – sensory neurons – actually have such a dual function. In the event of a bone fracture, these nerves not only report the trauma, but they also morph into ‘reconstruction commanders’ that actively direct the cellular workforce to rebuild the skeleton. The mostly federally funded study reports on and details for the first time, a network among peripheral afferent neurons – nerves that send signals from all areas of the body to the central nervous system (brain and spinal column) – through which the nerves communicate directly with bone-building cells after a skeletal injury, using specific protein signals to stimulate the generation, growth and spread of new, healing bone. “For the first time, we have mapped the circuitry of this neural network, defined which specific sensory neurons innervate [supply nerves to] bone, determined how these neurons change after an injury and identified which signals…
