The Musculoskeletal Genetics Lab focuses on the heritable musculoskeletal disorders of aging, such as osteoporosis, osteoarthritis, muscle loss (sarcopenia), and fatty infiltration of muscle and liver. The search for genes underlying variation in risk of these common diseases, which began with the genome-wide association studies (GWAS) in human populations, is reinforced by validation using functional experiments in animal models .(murine and piscine), based on homology between the species
