Researchers at the Technical University of Dresden and the Karolinska Institute used the same Cold War radiocarbon signature previously used to date heart muscle cells, this time applied to human liver cells.
The team measured carbon-14 in liver cells collected at autopsy and found the organ keeps an average cell age of under three years, regardless of the donor's own age. Diploid liver cells, the ones with a standard two-copy set of chromosomes, were born more than seven times as often each year as the polyploid cells carrying extra chromosome copies.
Polyploid cells, more common in older livers, divide far less often, and the authors found that cells rarely switch between the two states in a healthy liver. The work builds directly on the same group's earlier study dating heart muscle cells, and it leaves open exactly what triggers a liver cell to become polyploid in the first place.
Read the original study
Heinke et al., Cell Systems, 2022 · doi.org/10.1016/j.cels.2022.05.001
A liver younger than almost anyone who owns one.
Source
- Heinke, P., Rost, F., Rode, J., Trus, P., Simonova, I., Lázár, E., Feddema, J., Welsch, T., Alkass, K., Salehpour, M., Zimmermann, A., Seehofer, D., Possnert, G., Damm, G., Druid, H., Brusch, L., & Bergmann, O. (2022). Diploid hepatocytes drive physiological liver renewal in adult humans. Cell Systems, 13(6), 499–507.e12. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cels.2022.05.001