Page 197 - The Biochemistry of Inorganic Polyphosphates

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may act as an additional regulator of calcification and decalcification in bone tissue, in ad-
dition to PP i . The treatment of cultures of human osteosarcoma cell line SaOS-2 with PolyP
causes a strong suppression of mineralization induced by β-glycerophosphate (Schr¨oder
et al., 2000), thus indicating that this polymer may act as a mineralization inhibitor.
Exopolyphosphatase activity in osteoblasts is much higher than in other mammalian
cells and tissues tested. Moreover, endopolyphosphatase activity is present in bone-forming
osteoblasts (Schr¨oder et al., 2000). All of these data suggest that, besides PP i , PolyP is
involved in the mineralization process in bone tissue.
Thus, the current data available, despite their ‘fragmentariness’, demonstrate the impor-
tance of further investigation of PolyP accumulation and utilization in animals, because
PolyPs are probably an important additional regulatory factor in higher eukaryotes.