Transcription Profiles of Marker Genes Predict the Transdifferentiation Relationship Between Eight Types of Liver Cell During Rat Liver Regeneration

Objective: to investigate the transdifferentiation relationship between eight types of livercell during rat liver regeneration (lr).materials and methods: 114 healthy sprague-dawley (sd) rats were used in this experimentalstudy. eight types of liver cell were isolated and purified with percoll densitygradient centrifugation and immunomagentic bead methods. marker genes for eight typesof cell were obtained by retrieving the relevant references and databases. expressionchanges of markers for each cell of the eight cell types were measured using microarray.the relationships between the expression profiles of marker genes and transdifferentiationamong liver cells were analyzed using bioinformatics. liver cell transdifferentiationwas predicted by comparing expression profiles of marker genes in different liver cells.results: during lr hepatocytes (hcs) not only express hepatic oval cells (hoc) markers(including prom1, krt14 and ly6e), but also express biliary epithelial cell (bec) markers(including krt7 and krt19); becs express both hoc markers (including gabrp,pcna and thy1) and hc markers such as cps1, tat, krt8 and krt18; both hcmarkers (krt18, krt8 and wt1) and bec markers (krt7 and krt19) were detected inhocs. additionally, some hc markers were also significantly upregulated in hepatic stellatecells ( hscs), sinusoidal endothelial cells (secs) , kupffer cells (kcs) and dendriticcells (dcs), mainly at 6-72 hours post partial hepatectomy (ph).conclusion: our findings indicate that there is a mutual transdifferentiation relationshipbetween hc, bec and hoc during lr, and a tendency for hscs, secs, kcs and dcsto transdifferentiate into hcs.