Department of Medicine
University of Wisconsin
ROBERT D BLANK
Contact Information
600 HIGHLAND AVE
MADISON, WI 53792
Mail Code: 5148
Biography
Clinical Expertise
Dr. Blank's clinical practice emphasizes metabolic bone disease, genetic endocrine diseases, and endocrine oncology. He is particularly interested in bone dysplasias and the multiple endocrine neoplasia syndromes.
Clinical Research
Dr. Blank pursues several clinical research projects in collaboration with other investigators. With Cathy Raggio and Phil Giampietro, he studies the genetics of idiopathic scoliosis and the genetics of congenital vertebral malformations. In collaboration with Jon Wolff and Neil Binkley, he studies skeletal fragility in phenylketonuria. In collaboration with Karen Hansen and Neil Binkley, he studies the performance of bone densitometry.
Basic Research
The principal focus of Dr. Blank's laboratory is to understand the genetic basis of bone's biomechanical performance. This is done through a combination of standard mouse genetics approaches and comprehensive assessment of bone biomechanics, bone anatomy, and bone biochemistry. The lab is particularly interested in the post-natal development of bone and age-related changes in bone tissue and bone structure.
Current Research
The Blank laboratory studies the genetic determination of bone properties. Two complementary areas are being pursued: biomechanical performance and establishment of vertebral and spinal morphology.
To study the genetics of biomechanical performance, the Blank lab performed reciprocal intercrosses of the recombinant congenic mouse strains HcB-8 x HcB-23 and HcB-13 x HcB-14,, finding significant quantitative trait loci for bone strength and related traits on multiple chromosomes. The mapped genes' locations are constrained by past recombination events, in some cases to very short chromosome regions. Currently, we are working to prove that a strong candidate gene for bone geometry, biomechanics, and mineralization is in fact responsible for the observed linkage.
To study vertebral morphogenesis and architecture, the lab is engaged in both linkage and association studies. We recently found an association between a missense mutation in the T gene to varied congenital vertebral malformations. To follow up this finding, the lab is creating a knock-in mouse in which the effects of the mutation can be studied in detail.
Search for Robert Blank's literature abstracts on PubMed