Lacunar-canalicular system
Also called: LCS
What it means
The lacunar-canalicular system is a network of tiny spaces and channels in bone where fluid moves when bone is loaded, letting osteocytes sense mechanical activity.
This system is how your bone cells sense movement and loading, which is part of how your skeleton stays responsive to activity over your lifetime.
The lacunar-canalicular system is the network of tiny spaces and channels running through bone. Osteocytes, the cells embedded deep in bone, sit inside small pockets called lacunae, and thin channels called canaliculi connect them to each other and to the rest of the bone. Fluid moves through this network whenever bone is loaded or bent.
When bone bends during activity, that fluid gets pushed through the canaliculi, which are extremely narrow, only 0.1 to 0.5 micrometers wide. This movement creates shear stress against the tiny dendrites that stretch out from each osteocyte. Scientists currently think this fluid flow is the main way osteocytes sense that the bone is being loaded, rather than the bending itself.
The general pattern described is that loading which is faster or harder tends to push fluid through the system more forcefully, which creates a stronger signal to the osteocytes. This is part of how your skeleton senses mechanical activity, though the full picture of how that signal then leads to changes in bone involves other cells and processes as well.
How sure is this?
Graded Established Science: Supported by broad scientific consensus and decades of research. Read each study with its grade in mind. One study is a piece of the picture, not the whole of it.
Where the Academy teaches it
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Questions people ask about this
Your bones actually have their own sensing system built right in. Buried deep inside bone tissue are cells called osteocytes — by far the most numerous cells in your skeleton — and their whole job is to detect mechanical force, like the kind created when you move, bear weight, or put strain through a bone.
Read the full answer →When you push on bone, it actually bends very slightly — far too little to see, but enough at the microscopic level to squeeze fluid through tiny channels inside the bone. That fluid movement is what your bone cells sense, and it's the very first step in a chain of signals that tells your bone "you're using me."
Read the full answer →Pushing hard against a machine creates a strong, brief mechanical load on your skeleton. Your bones contain sensor cells that detect this load as fluid movement around them, and that signal tells bone-building cells to get to work, while slowing down the cells that break bone down. Over time, repeated signals like this are part of how bone tissue remodels itself.
Read the full answer →Related words
Osteocytes are the most common bone cells. They used to be bone-builders but got trapped inside bone tissue, where…
Canaliculi are microscopic channels in bone that connect bone cells together and let fluid flow past them, helping…
A lacuna is a tiny chamber inside bone where an osteocyte, a mature bone cell, lives and senses the forces placed on…
Interstitial fluid flow is the movement of fluid through tiny channels in bone that happens when bone bends,…
Mechanotransduction is how bone cells sense physical force and turn it into chemical signals that tell bone to adapt.
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