Abstract
The demonstration that bone is an endocrine organ has been objectively an important recent advance in skeleton biology. Indeed, it has changed the type of questions asked in this field, because it has immediately connected bone biology to the rest of the body and to many complex physiological processes (1). Moreover, the fact that, via the hormone it produces, osteocalcin, bones regulate biological functions as diverse and unrelated to each other as glucose metabolism (2), male fertility in mice and humans (3, 4), and brain development and cognitive functions (5) raises a myriad of new questions that apply to various degrees to each of these functions. For instance, what is/are the receptor(s) used by osteocalcin to regulate each of these functions? What is the number and what are the identities of all the cellular processes regulated by osteocalcin in its known target cells? In addition, and this is a question that is specific to osteocalcin, because this protein is subjected to a posttranslational modification, which form of osteocalcin is acting as a hormone?
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