Calcium phosphate salts provide the hardness and rigidity which uniquely characterize normal, healthy bone and teeth. Developmental defects in the deposition of these salts or their destruction and loss by disease can severely impair the function of these skeletal tissues. The purpose of this project is to study the physical, chemical, and ultrastructural properties of these salts, and to clarify the kinetic and thermodynamic processes and the interactions with substances of biological interest that uniquely enable these salts to carry out their specialized role in vivo. The properties of calcium phosphate salts are being studied with a variety of ultrastructural and physical-chemical techniques such as electron microscopy, x-ray diffraction, surface area analyses, chromatographic and standard analytical chemistry procedures. Topics currently being pursued include (1) the use of artificial lipid vesicles (i.e., liposomes) as in vitro models for investigating the physico-chemical aspects of calcium phosphate precipitate formation in matrix vesicles, and (2) the growth dynamics of apatite crystals prepared under physiological-like aqueous solution conditions. The liposome experiments are being conducted with the goal of better understanding how matrix vesicles, the loci for early mineralization in many vertebrate hard tissues, can initiate precipitation in their membrane-bound interior spaces and control the expansion of this initial precipitate into the surrounding extracellular space. The purpose of the crystal growth experiments is to better elucidate the physicochemical and physiological factors delimiting the size and shape apatite crystals can attain in various hard tissues.
