Liquid-crystal organization of liver tissue
- Max Planck Institute for Cell Biology and Genetics, Germany
- Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems, Germany
- Technische Universität Dresden, Germany
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology, United States
- Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology, Russian Federation
Abstract
Functional tissue architecture originates by self-assembly of distinct cell types, following tissue-specific rules of cell-cell interactions. In the liver, a structural model of the lobule was pioneered by Elias in 1949. This model, however, is in contrast with the apparent random 3D arrangement of hepatocytes. Since then, no significant progress has been made to derive the organizing principles of liver tissue. To solve this outstanding problem, we computationally reconstructed 3D tissue geometry from microscopy images of mouse liver tissue and analyzed it applying soft-condensed-matter-physics concepts. Surprisingly, analysis of the spatial organization of cell polarity revealed that hepatocytes are not randomly oriented but follow a long-range liquid-crystal order. This does not depend exclusively on hepatocytes receiving instructive signals by endothelial cells, since silencing Integrin-β1 disrupted both liquid-crystal order and organization of the sinusoidal network. Our results suggest that bi-directional communication between hepatocytes and sinusoids underlies the self-organization of liver tissue.
Data availability
All data generated or analysed during this study are included in the manuscript and supporting files. Source data files have been provided for Figure 1-figure supplement 2 and Figure 1-figure supplement 3
Article and author information
Author details
Hernán Morales-Navarrete
Fabián Segovia-Miranda
Benjamin M Friedrich
Funding
H2020 European Research Council (Grant number 695646)
- Hernán Morales-Navarrete
Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung (LiSyM-031L0038)
- Fabián Segovia-Miranda
- Kirstin Meyer
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (Cluster of Excellence EXC 1056 cfaed)
- Benjamin M Friedrich
Max-Planck-Gesellschaft (Open-access funding)
- Hidenori Nonaka
Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung (SYSBIO II-031L0044)
- Fabián Segovia-Miranda
- Kirstin Meyer
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Reviewing Editor
- Pierre Sens, Institut Curie, PSL Research University, CNRS, France
Ethics
Animal experimentation: All procedures were performed in compliance with German animal welfarelegislation and in pathogen-free conditions in the animal facility ofthe MPI-CBG, Dresden, Germany. Protocols were approved by theInstitutional Animal Welfare Officer (Tierschutzbeauftragter) and allnecessary licenses were obtained from the regional Ethical Commissionfor Animal Experimentation of Dresden, Germany (Tierversuchskommission,Landesdirektion Dresden)(License number: DD24-5131/338/50).
Version history
- Received: January 4, 2019
- Accepted: June 14, 2019
- Accepted Manuscript published: June 17, 2019 (version 1)
- Version of Record published: June 28, 2019 (version 2)
Copyright
© 2019, Morales-Navarrete et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
Metrics
-
- 4,774
- views
-
- 728
- downloads
-
- 44
- citations
Views, downloads and citations are aggregated across all versions of this paper published by eLife.
Download links
A two-part list of links to download the article, or parts of the article, in various formats.
Downloads (link to download the article as PDF)
Open citations (links to open the citations from this article in various online reference manager services)
Cite this article (links to download the citations from this article in formats compatible with various reference manager tools)
Liquid-crystal organization of liver tissue
eLife 8:e44860.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.44860
Further reading
-
- Physics of Living Systems
During locomotion, soft-bodied terrestrial animals solve complex control problems at substrate interfaces, but our understanding of how they achieve this without rigid components remains incomplete. Here, we develop new all-optical methods based on optical interference in a deformable substrate to measure ground reaction forces (GRFs) with micrometre and nanonewton precision in behaving Drosophila larvae. Combining this with a kinematic analysis of substrate-interfacing features, we shed new light onto the biomechanical control of larval locomotion. Crawling in larvae measuring ~1 mm in length involves an intricate pattern of cuticle sequestration and planting, producing GRFs of 1–7 µN. We show that larvae insert and expand denticulated, feet-like structures into substrates as they move, a process not previously observed in soft-bodied animals. These ‘protopodia’ form dynamic anchors to compensate counteracting forces. Our work provides a framework for future biomechanics research in soft-bodied animals and promises to inspire improved soft-robot design.
-
- Physics of Living Systems
Despite long-running efforts to increase gender diversity among tenured and tenure-track faculty in the U.S., women remain underrepresented in most academic fields, sometimes dramatically so. Here, we quantify the relative importance of faculty hiring and faculty attrition for both past and future faculty gender diversity using comprehensive data on the training and employment of 268,769 tenured and tenure-track faculty rostered at 12,112U.S. PhD-granting departments, spanning 111 academic fields between 2011 and 2020. Over this time, we find that hiring had a far greater impact on women’s representation among faculty than attrition in the majority (90.1%) of academic fields, even as academia loses a higher share of women faculty relative to men at every career stage. Finally, we model the impact of five specific policy interventions on women’s representation, and project that eliminating attrition differences between women and men only leads to a marginal increase in women’s overall representation—in most fields, successful interventions will need to make substantial and sustained changes to hiring in order to reach gender parity.
