Back

Clonal dynamics of normal hepatocyte expansions in homeostatic human livers and their association with the biliary epithelium

Passman, A.; Haughey, M. J.; Carlotti, E.; Williams, M. J.; Cereser, B. J.; Lin, M.-L.; Devkumar, S.; Gabriel, J. p.; Russo, F. P.; Hoare, M.; Jansen, M.; Chin-Aleong, J.; Wright, N. A.; Kocher, H.; Huang, W.; Alison, M. R.; McDonald, S. A.

2021-07-02 cell biology
10.1101/2021.07.02.450704 bioRxiv
Show abstract

The majority of human liver research is disease-focused such that far less is known of cellular dynamics within normal human liver. We have leveraged cytochrome c oxidase deficiency as a marker of clonal hepatocyte populations in such tissues. We demonstrate these populations commonly associate with portal tracts and lineage-trace hepatocytes with cholangiocytes, indicating the presence of a bipotential common ancestor at this niche. We also observe rare periportal SOX9+ hepatocytes progenitor candidates in our human tissues. To understand clonal expansion dynamics, we measured methylation diversity and identified mtDNA variants by next-generation sequencing within spatially-defined clonal hepatocyte patches. We coupled our sequencing with mathematical modelling and Bayesian inference to compare spatial patterns of mtDNA variants under assumptions with or without faster expansion from a portal-associated niche. These datasets support the existence of a periportal progenitor niche and indicate that clonal patches slowly expand, perhaps due to acute environmental stimuli, then quiesce. These findings crucially contribute to our understanding of hepatocyte dynamics in normal human liver and provide a baseline for understanding how such dynamics may be modulated in diseased liver.

Matching journals

The top 9 journals account for 50% of the predicted probability mass.

50% of probability mass above

"Similar papers" are the closest papers from that journal in the model's embedding space. They show what the match is built on, but the ranking comes mostly from a classifier over the whole training set, not from these examples alone.