Liver Pools

Before we were born, our developing bodies were home to millions of stem cells. Similar to begin with, these cells grow apart over time, changing into different parts of early tissues. In this developing liver, a blue dye highlights each cell’s nucleus, while green and red fluorescence picks out cells changing, or differentiating into specific structures – like the cholangiocytes forming the bile duct in the centre of the picture. There is huge potential in capturing stem cells before such cellular 'decisions' are made – their remarkable transformative ability could be harnessed to repair tissues later in life. Researchers can now extract pools of liver stem cells, keeping them happily 'undecided' using a bath of chemicals that mimics their natural environment. By carefully nurturing stem cells outside the body, scientists can also transplant them into living creatures like mice, providing new ways to study development and disease.

January is Love Your Liver month

Written by John Ankers

John Ankers

Writer

A former researcher in systems biology, John is now an online biology tutor and professional coach supporting the wellbeing of scientists and NHS professionals. He's writing, too, of course.

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• Image from work by Marina E. Fomin, Ashley I. Beyer and Marcus O. Muench
• Blood Systems Research Institute, San Francisco, CA, USA
• Image originally published under a Creative Commons Licence (BY 4.0)
• Published in Open Biology, journal of the Royal Society, December 2017