osteoblasts is not well understood. Two major events for bone formation include osteoblast
differentiation by bone marker gene expression, which is mainly regulated by bone-specific
transcription factor Runx2 and extracellular matrix (ECM) mineralization by Ca deposits for
bone nodule formation. We investigated whether zinc deficiency down-regulates bone
marker gene transcription and whether this might occur through modulation of Runx2. We …