Welcome to the Lab

The Neuroskeletal Biology Laboratory (NSBL) was founded in 2016 and is part of the Musculoskeletal Research Center (MRC) and Division of Bone and Mineral Diseases at Washington University. The laboratory consists of a mix of technicians, trainees/fellows, and undergraduate researchers. For more information about our members and their accomplishments, please see the people, awards, and antics pages. You can also find us on twitter.

Our Research

Our laboratory synthesizes concepts from cell biology, physiology, and bioengineering to study the relationships between the nervous system and the skeleton. We have a directed interest in understanding how neural signals contribute to skeletal homeostasis, and how perturbations to this system contribute to bone loss, impaired healing, and skeletal pain. For more information about our work, see our projects and publications.

Recent Events

Sarm1 knockout prevents type 1 diabetic bone disease in females independent of neuropathy (Links to an external site)

Patients with diabetes have a high risk of developing skeletal diseases accompanied by diabetic peripheral neuropathy (DPN). In this study, we isolated the role of DPN in skeletal disease with global and conditional knockout models of sterile-α and TIR-motif-containing protein-1 (Sarm1). SARM1, an NADase highly expressed in the nervous system, regulates axon degeneration upon a […]

Development and Expansion of Intramuscular Adipose Tissue is Not Dependent on UCP-1-Lineage Cells in Mice (Links to an external site)

Accumulation of adipose tissue within and outside of skeletal muscle is associated with orthopedic injury and metabolic disease, where it is thought to impede muscle function. The close juxtaposition between this adipose and myofibers has led to hypotheses that paracrine interactions between the two regulate local physiology. Recent work suggests that intramuscular adipose tissue (IMAT) […]

Xiao Zhang attends the BME leadership retreat in Minnesota.

Xiao Zhang attends the BME leadership retreat in Minnesota.
Xiao Zhang, a PhD student in the Scheller lab attended the Biomedical Engineering retreat in Minnesota. This regional career conference helps strengthen and diversify the next generation of researchers, giving them the opportunity to network with leaders in the field. It also provides a great opportunity to learn from faculty and peers about academic careers […]

Scheller Lab presents posters at MRC Symposium (Links to an external site)

Scheller Lab presents posters at MRC Symposium
The Scheller Lab members presented their posters at the Musculoskeletal Research Symposium while Dr. Scheller presented her postdoc Dr. Muhammad Hassan’s research. The annual MRC symposium always challenges us to grow by putting our work out there. Congratulations to our experienced pros and first time presenters, and especially Xiao Zhang for taking home one of […]

Knockout of TSC2 in Nav1.8+ neurons predisposes to the onset of normal weight obesity (Links to an external site)

Knockout of TSC2 in Nav1.8+ neurons predisposes to the onset of normal weight obesity
Obesity and nutrient oversupply increase mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) signaling in multiple cell types and organs, contributing to the onset of insulin resistance and complications of metabolic disease. However, it remains unclear when and where mTOR activation mediates these effects, limiting options for therapeutic intervention. The objective of this study was to isolate the role of constitutive […]

Welcome to our new undergraduates – Anurag Majumdar and Anna Li (Links to an external site)

Welcome to our new undergraduates – Anurag Majumdar and Anna Li
Anurag is an undergraduate student at Washington University majoring in Biology: Neuroscience. He is currently working to identify cerebral regions of leptin sensitivity or abnormality in response to chronically high leptin levels. Anna is an undergraduate student studying Biomedical Engineering at Washington University. She will be assisting in bone scan analysis and projects investigating bioelectric […]

A bone-specific adipogenesis pathway in health and disease (Links to an external site)

A bone-specific adipogenesis pathway in health and disease
Bone marrow adipocytes accumulate with age and in diverse disease states. However, their origins and adaptations in these conditions remain unclear, impairing our understanding of their context-specific endocrine functions and relationship with surrounding tissues. In this study, by analyzing bone and adipose tissues in the lipodystrophic ‘fat-free’ mouse, we define a novel, secondary adipogenesis pathway […]

Neuroskeletal Effects of Chronic Bioelectric Nerve Stimulation in Health and Diabetes (Links to an external site)

Neuroskeletal Effects of Chronic Bioelectric Nerve Stimulation in Health and Diabetes
Background/Aims: Bioelectric nerve stimulation (eStim) is an emerging clinical paradigm that can promote nerve regeneration after trauma, including within the context of diabetes. However, its ability to prevent the onset of diabetic peripheral neuropathy (DPN) has not yet been evaluated. Beyond the nerve itself, DPN has emerged as a potential contributor to sarcopenia and bone disease; […]

Neural regulation of bone marrow adipose tissue (Links to an external site)

Neural regulation of bone marrow adipose tissue
Bone marrow adipose tissue (BMAT) is an important cellular component of the skeleton. Understanding how it is regulated by the nervous system is crucial to the study of bone and bone marrow related diseases. BMAT is innervated by sympathetic and sensory axons in bone and fluctuations in local nerve density and function may contribute to […]

A neuroskeletal atlas: spatial mapping and contextualization of axon subtypes innervating the long bones of C3H and B6 mice (Links to an external site)

A neuroskeletal atlas: spatial mapping and contextualization of axon subtypes innervating the long bones of C3H and B6 mice
Nerves in bone play well‐established roles in pain and vasoregulation and have been associated with progression of skeletal disorders including osteoporosis, fracture, arthritis and tumor metastasis. However, isolation of the region‐specific mechanisms underlying these relationships is limited by our lack of quantitative methods for neuroskeletal analysis and precise maps of skeletal innervation. To overcome these […]

Microneedles for ultrasensitive biomarker detection (Links to an external site)

Microneedles for ultrasensitive biomarker detection
The detection and quantification of protein biomarkers in interstitial fluid is hampered by challenges in its sampling and analysis. Here we report the use of a microneedle patch for fast in vivo sampling and on-needle quantification of target protein biomarkers in interstitial fluid. We used plasmonic fluor—an ultrabright fluorescent label—to improve the limit of detection […]

Immunostaining of Skeletal Tissues (Links to an external site)

Immunostaining of Skeletal Tissues
Immunostaining is the process of identifying proteins in tissue sections by incubating the sample with antibodies specific to the protein of interest, then visualizing the bound antibody using a chromogen (immunohistochemistry or IHC) or fluorescence (immunofluorescence or IF). Unlike in situ hybridization, which identifies gene transcripts in cells, immunostaining identifies the products themselves and provides […]

Postdoc Dr. Mohamed Hassan awarded RLM fellowship (Links to an external site)

Postdoc Dr. Mohamed Hassan awarded RLM fellowship
Dr. Hassan was recently selected as the 2020 recipient of the Rita Levi-Montalcini Postdoctoral Fellowship in Regenerative Medicine by the Washington University Center of Regenerative Medicine. Dr. Hassan is a dentist-scientist with training in Orthodontics and will join the lab in the Summer of 2021 to begin his work. Congratulations, Mohamed!

JBMR Nerves in Bone review ranked #3 in yearly downloads (Links to an external site)

JBMR Nerves in Bone review ranked #3 in yearly downloads
Congratulations to postdoctoral fellow Dr. Jennifer Brazill and her co-authors on publishing the 3rd most downloaded paper from JBMR over the past year – “Nerves in Bone: Evolving Concepts in Pain and Anabolism”.  This speaks to the high quality of the article and the emerging interest in the field. Great work!

Xiao Zhang wins two research awards for work on marrow fat (Links to an external site)

Xiao Zhang wins two research awards for work on marrow fat
Xiao Zhang won two of the prestigious awards for research at the recent BMA2020 meeting. After an independent committee review, his oral presentation “Fat in a fatless mouse: a novel origin of maladapted bone marrow adipocytes with age and disease” won 1st place in the best abstract category. In addition, his 2nd abstract “Neural contributions […]

Jobs and Opportunities

Check out our Jobs and Projects pages for more information.