The liver is an important metabolic organ in the human body, and its main functional cells are hepatocytes.

Once the liver is damaged, new liver cells are needed to complete functional repair.

Therefore, finding the source of new hepatocytes in the treatment of liver diseases is a problem that scientists are committed to solving.

The research team of the Center for Excellence in Molecular Cell Science (Institute of Biochemistry and Cell Biology) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences developed a new technology called ProTracer that can continuously capture cell proliferation for a long time. Using this technology, they discovered new hepatocytes in adult livers.

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Relevant research results were published in Science.

The basic unit of the liver is the hepatic lobule, and the hepatocytes in the hepatic lobules produce new hepatocytes through self-proliferation.

Each liver lobule can be divided into multiple regions, and the liver cells in these regions are not the same. Scientists have not yet found an accurate answer as to which region of the liver cells has stronger proliferation ability.

More efficient than traditional methods. Previous studies on the origin of hepatocytes relied on single molecular markers to track a certain subpopulation of hepatocytes in the liver, and then observed the expansion of this subpopulation.

This method is inefficient and lacks analysis of the proliferation ability of all liver cells in the entire liver. It is like a blind man touching an elephant, observing parts of things rather than the whole.

To accurately find the source of new hepatocytes, it is necessary to detect the proliferation of all hepatocytes at the overall level of the liver.

The traditional method of detecting cell proliferation is like a camera, which can only capture a moment, that is, detect cell proliferation at a certain point in time, and cannot accurately distinguish the proliferation of various types of cells.

Hepatocytes proliferate at a relatively slow rate, while other types of cells in the liver, such as macrophages and endothelial cells, proliferate relatively quickly.

Using traditional methods to detect cell proliferation, the hepatocyte proliferation signal that can be obtained at a certain time point is very little or even nonexistent, and even if there is, it is easily overwhelmed by the proliferation information of other cells.

The research team developed a video recorder that can capture cell proliferation? ProTracer, which can not only track cell proliferation continuously over a long period of time, but also accurately locate and track the cell proliferation of a specific cell group (such as liver cells), making the night

Only the targeted "star cluster" shines, instead of looking for one or two of them among the stars in the sky.

In experiments on mice, they used this technology to label proliferating liver cells with a unique marker. After weeks to months of close tracking, they finally found that new hepatocytes in the adult liver mainly originate from the middle of the liver lobules.

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This study intuitively displays the proliferation of all liver cell groups through a new perspective and technical means, reveals the origin of hepatocytes in the physiological homeostasis and injury regeneration process of the adult liver, and opens up new ideas for liver injury repair and regeneration research.

, providing a new theoretical basis for the treatment of liver diseases.

?Researchers told China Science News that the newly developed ProTracer technology has the ability to continuously detect cell proliferation for a long time, can specifically mark cell proliferation of a specific cell lineage, and enables direct in vivo detection of cell proliferation without sacrificing samples.

, which improves the ability and scope of cell proliferation detection from multiple dimensions, can be widely used in the detection of cell proliferation in different tissues and organs, and provides strong technical support for research in many fields such as developmental biology, oncology, neuroscience, and regenerative medicine.

Providing a new path for the treatment of liver diseases is reported to have been highly praised by authoritative experts at home and abroad.

Emma R. Anderssion, a professor at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden, published a highlight article in Science titled "In the zone for liver proliferation (optimal area for liver proliferation)" on this work, evaluating the work.

?Developed a very interesting and novel new technology for tracking cell proliferation, ProTracer, which reveals the origin of liver cells under physiological steady state and different injury states. He also praised the application prospects of ProTracer technology and believed that ProTracer provides a continuous

The potential to track adult cell proliferation over extended periods of time (months) into adulthood, allowing the identification of slower-proliferating cells and rare stem cells in various organs, potentially revealing previously unknown stem cell populations.

An academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering from the National Liver Cancer Science Center commented that this work has taken a new approach, using new technologies to intuitively and unbiasedly find the source of new liver cells, providing new ideas and new ideas for exploring the mechanism of liver regeneration and clinical research on liver diseases.

technology, laying a solid foundation for transformation and application research?

She believes that ProTracer technology has broad practicality and can be extended to research on cell proliferation and origin in various tissues and organs of the human body.

This work of the research team has received strong support from other scientific research teams.

This work also received strong support from the Animal Platform and Cell Analysis Technology Platform of the Center for Excellence in Molecular and Cell Science, as well as financial support from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the National Foundation for Science and Technology, the Ministry of Science and Technology, and the Shanghai Municipal Science and Technology Commission.