Publications on Calcification and Hard Tissues
An obvious role for alkaline phosphatase is the provision of phosphate ions to be incorporated in the growing crystals of hydroxyapatite in bones, as proposed nearly 100 years ago.
But body fluids are supersaturated with calcium and phosphate, so the enzyme appears to be unnecessary and anyway it is much better as a phospho-transferase than a hydrolase. Contrariwise, if the enzyme is absent, bone growth fails. So what is it doing, really? And how does calcification begin, including in urinary stones? And what are extracellular glycans for? The papers grouped here attempt those questions
Calcification, matrix vesicles and alkaline phosphatase
with W.C.H. Leung and D.K.Y. Shum, Electrophoretic studies on matrix vesicles from rabbit growth plate cartilage.in B. Rabie (ed) Formation and repair of mineralized extracellular matrix, Elsevier, Amsterdam, 1997
Patricia Juliana HUNG (PhD, Hong Kong, 1996) (Supervisor). Studies on alkaline phosphatase and its relationship to phosphorylation of matrix vesicle components.
with D.K.Y. Shum, Urinary glycosaminoglycan fractionation - chromatographic affinity versus electrophoretic mobility. Guangdong-Hong Kong Biochemical Conference Shenzen, June (1988) Proceedings 33-4.
Urinary excretion of acidic glycosaminoglycans in congenitally malformed children. IRCS Med Sci 10 (1982) 413-4