[DrYsabella (OP)]

After morning discussion with Smartest  Anesthetist in my World (California) , wanted to find more on bone growth  related to "piezoelectric crystal" effect.
Found this place!! TOO awesome! Joined...and uber-high IQ helped naught when it took me 4 tries to get the Captcha correct ... darn bunnies & train.....and shouldn't I be able to do this FASTER?
Lesson probably related to "slow down & do it right" ..... no, probably not. LOL
Hi all...looks fascinating.
I like trains.  []
Bunnies not so much.
DrYsabella

[alancalverd]

Welcome, and please give us a hint about the piezoelectric effect in bone growth! I'm familiar with bone mineralisation depending on stress, but I would have thought the conductive environment of the body would disperse any piezoelectric charge. But then there are electric eels....   

[RD]

the only thing I can find at the moment is this paper from 1970 ...

Piezoelectric Effect and Growth Control in Bone

THE adaptability of bone under impressed mechanical forces has been known since the time of Wolff.
A possible control mechanism for the process became apparent with the discovery of the piezoelectric effect in bone. In theory this effect could translate an environmental stimulus into a biologically recognizable signal controlling growth or resorptive processes ...

http://andrewamarino.com/PDFs/010-Nature1970.pdf [Links inactive - To make links active and clickable, login or click here to register]

The hypothesis may have been overturned since then.

Update : "piezoelectric" currently repeated in wikipedia , which refers to a 1987 book ...

[bone] Repair

Repeated stress, such as weight-bearing exercise or bone healing, results in the bone thickening at the points of maximum stress (Wolff's law). It has been hypothesized that this is a result of bone's piezoelectric properties, which cause bone to generate small electrical potentials under stress

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bone#Repair [Links inactive - To make links active and clickable, login or click here to register]