The Osteocyte Transcriptome: Discovering Messages Buried Within Bone.

Purpose Of The Review: Osteocytes are cells embedded within the bone matrix, but their function and specific patterns of gene expression remain only partially defined; this is beginning to change with recent studies using transcriptomics. This unbiased approach can generate large amounts of data and is now being used to identify novel genes and signalling pathways within osteocytes both at baseline conditions and in response to stimuli. This review outlines the methods used to isolate cell populations containing osteocytes, and key recent transcriptomic studies that used osteocyte-containing preparations from bone tissue.