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Peer-reviewedCC BY 4.0ACS Omega

Structure Determination of a Single Bioapatite Crystal from an Archeological Metastatic Cancer Bone – a TEM Case Study

  • Zsolt Dallos1
  • Marco Santucci2
  • Krisztián Kiss3,4,5,6
  • Melanie Bauer2
  • Michael Burtscher7
  • Zoltán Kovács8
  • Tamás Szeniczey3
  • Antónia Marcsik9
  • Erika Molnár9
  • Krisztina Buczkó10,11
  • Daniel Kiener7
  • Ute Kolb2,12
2 more authors
  • Tamás Hajdu3,13
  • István Dódony10
13 affiliations
  1. 1Friedrich Schiller University Jena , , ,
  2. 2Johannes-Gutenberg-University , , ,
  3. 3Eötvös Loránd University , , ,
  4. 4ELTE Research Centre for the Humanities , , ,
  5. 5University of Miskolc , , ,
  6. 6MTA−ELTE HTK , , ,
  7. 7Technical University of Leoben , , ,
  8. 8HUN-REN Centre for Energy Research , ,
  9. 9University of Szeged , , ,
  10. 10University of Pannonia , , ,
  11. 11Hungarian Natural History Museum , , ,
  12. 12Technical University of Darmstadt , , ,
  13. 13Institute for Anthropological Research , , ,
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Abstract

The inorganic component of bone, bioapatite, is generally regarded as a poorly crystalline, carbonate-substituted hydroxyapatite. However, a direct structural and chemical characterization of bioapatite has not yet been achieved due to the extremely small size of its crystals ─ typically only a few tens of nanometers ─ and their intimate association with the organic matrix of bone. In this study, we examined a single crystal of bioapatite extracted from an archeological, metastatic bone cancer sample using 3D ED (3-Dimensional Electron Diffraction), which enabled structural analysis of the three-dimensional reciprocal space despite the nanometric crystal dimensions. Conventional structural techniques, such as single-crystal X-ray diffraction, require crystals several orders of magnitude larger than those found in bone, rendering them inapplicable to individual bioapatite crystallites. Powder-based methods, on the other hand, can only provide averaged structural information across billions of crystals, obscuring the intrinsic structural features of individual nanocrystals. The bioapatite single crystal was found to crystallize in space groups P63 and P63/m, with lattice parameters a = 9.414 Å; c = 6.881 Å, and showed no evidence of carbonate substitution. The measured Ca/P ratio on single crystals was 1.65 on average.

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Cite

BibTeXRIS
BibTeX
@article{dallos2026structure,
  title = {{Structure Determination of a Single Bioapatite Crystal from an Archeological Metastatic Cancer Bone – a TEM Case Study}},
  author = {Zsolt Dallos and Marco Santucci and Krisztián Kiss and Melanie Bauer and Michael Burtscher and Zoltán Kovács and Tamás Szeniczey and Antónia Marcsik and Erika Molnár and Krisztina Buczkó and Daniel Kiener and Ute Kolb and Tamás Hajdu and István Dódony},
  journal = {ACS Omega},
  year = {2026},
  month = oct,
  doi = {10.1021/acsomega.6c05043},
  url = {https://pubs.acs.org/acsodf/article/11/42/64737/5449274/Structure-Determination-of-a-Single-Bioapatite},
  note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY  - JOUR
TI  - Structure Determination of a Single Bioapatite Crystal from an Archeological Metastatic Cancer Bone – a TEM Case Study
AU  - Zsolt Dallos
AU  - Marco Santucci
AU  - Krisztián Kiss
AU  - Melanie Bauer
AU  - Michael Burtscher
AU  - Zoltán Kovács
AU  - Tamás Szeniczey
AU  - Antónia Marcsik
AU  - Erika Molnár
AU  - Krisztina Buczkó
AU  - Daniel Kiener
AU  - Ute Kolb
AU  - Tamás Hajdu
AU  - István Dódony
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/10/12
JO  - ACS Omega
DO  - 10.1021/acsomega.6c05043
UR  - https://pubs.acs.org/acsodf/article/11/42/64737/5449274/Structure-Determination-of-a-Single-Bioapatite
AB  - The inorganic component of bone, bioapatite, is generally regarded as a poorly crystalline, carbonate-substituted hydroxyapatite. However, a direct structural and chemical characterization of bioapatite has not yet been achieved due to the extremely small size of its crystals ─ typically only a few tens of nanometers ─ and their intimate association with the organic matrix of bone. In this study, we examined a single crystal of bioapatite extracted from an archeological, metastatic bone cancer sample using 3D ED (3-Dimensional Electron Diffraction), which enabled structural analysis of the three-dimensional reciprocal space despite the nanometric crystal dimensions. Conventional structural techniques, such as single-crystal X-ray diffraction, require crystals several orders of magnitude larger than those found in bone, rendering them inapplicable to individual bioapatite crystallites. Powder-based methods, on the other hand, can only provide averaged structural information across billions of crystals, obscuring the intrinsic structural features of individual nanocrystals. The bioapatite single crystal was found to crystallize in space groups P63 and P63/m, with lattice parameters a = 9.414 Å; c = 6.881 Å, and showed no evidence of carbonate substitution. The measured Ca/P ratio on single crystals was 1.65 on average.
SN  - 2470-1343
ER  -