What Do I Do?

Last night at Neutral Ground I was yet again asked that infamous question, "What do you do, like for real?" What really gets me is that friends who have known me for quite some time will ask me this and I lose track of whether or not I've actually told them. But I must have right? So, maybe they just forgot...and if so, this is proabably because what I do isn't mainstream enough. Well, I'm a soon to be 4th-year Ph.D. student which means I'm doing research full-time and will eventually have a Ph.D. and the right to make people call me "Dr. Courtland"...which sounds dumb, so I'll never actually enforce that. I'm doing research that in the long-term (and by long-term I mean LONG-term) goal is to "cure" osteoporosis. My lab is hoping that by studying genetically distinct mice we'll help accomplish that. Now for those of you who are itching for more details, here are the three hypotheses and aims of my Ph.D. thesis proposal:

Hypothesis 1: Genetic variation in mouse femur mineral content is associated with a specific repertoire of mineral traits and tissue-level mechanical properties in adult mice.
Aim 1: Determine which femur mineral traits and tissue-level mechanical properties are characteristic of adult female A, B6, C3H/HeJ (C3H), DBA/2J (DBA), and SJL/J (SJL) mice.

Hypothesis 2: Genetic variation in adult mouse femur mineral content and adult tissue-level mechanical properties is achieved through differential regulation of mineral traits during growth and development.
Aim 2: Determine femur mineral traits for female A and B6 mice during growth and development (1 day, 2 weeks, and 4 weeks).

Hypothesis 3: An intercross of mice with different femur mineral contents and tissue-level mechanical properties will result in heritable and predictable changes in adult tissue-level mechanical properties and in the repertoire of femur mineral traits expressed during growth and development.
Aim 3: Determine mineral traits during growth and development of B6AF1/J and AB6F1/J female progeny (from an reciprocal parental cross) and correlate them with the femur tissue-level mechanical properties found in these progeny at adulthood.