Revealing Nanoscale Mineralization Pathways of Hydroxyapatite Using in Situ Liquid Cell Transmission Electron Microscopy

Overview

Journal Sci Adv

Specialties Biology
Science

Date 2020 Nov 19

PMID 33208378

Citations 22

Authors

Kun He

Michal Sawczyk

Cong Liu

Yifei Yuan

Boao Song

Ram Deivanayagam

Anmin Nie

Xiaobing Hu

Vinayak P Dravid

Jun Lu

Cortino Sukotjo

Yu-Peng Lu

Petr Kral

Tolou Shokuhfar

Reza Shahbazian-Yassar

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

To treat impairments in hard tissues or overcome pathological calcification in soft tissues, a detailed understanding of mineralization pathways of calcium phosphate materials is needed. Here, we report a detailed mechanistic study of hydroxyapatite (HA) mineralization pathways in an artificial saliva solution via in situ liquid cell transmission electron microscopy (TEM). It is found that the mineralization of HA starts by forming ion-rich and ion-poor solutions in the saliva solution, followed by coexistence of the classical and nonclassical nucleation processes. For the nonclassical path, amorphous calcium phosphate (ACP) functions as the substrate for HA nucleation on the ACP surface, while the classical path features direct HA nucleation from the solution. The growth of HA crystals on the surface of ACP is accompanied by the ACP dissolution process. The discoveries reported in this work are important to understand the physiological and pathological formation of HA minerals, as well as to engineer the biomineralization process for bone healing and hard tissue repairs.

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