肝脏血管内皮细胞发育起源研究

肝脏是机体重要的代谢器官，发挥糖原代谢、蛋白合成、解毒及胆汁合成和储存等诸多生理学功能。肝脏的血管对于肝脏的发育、肝脏生理稳态的功能维持以及损伤再生至关重要，然而其发育起源和形成过程的研究却仍不甚清晰。基于发育过程中心内膜与肝脏的位置非常接近，心内膜内皮细胞具有较强的迁移和增殖能力，我们推测心内膜内皮细胞是肝脏血管的可能来源。利用Nfatc1-Dre遗传谱系示踪心内膜内皮细胞，我们意外发现心内膜内皮细胞参与肝脏血管的形成，构成胚胎肝脏40%左右的血管，是肝脏血管发育的一个起源。接着，我们将采用其他工具多角度验证心内膜对肝脏血管的贡献，更深入分析参与形成肝脏血管的心内膜内皮细胞具体亚群，探索其对肝脏发育及再生的影响。我们的工作将解决肝脏血管发育起源的问题，为肝损伤再生过程中通过刺激血管新生达到促进肝再生的效果提供新的思路。

Liver，a vital metabolic organ of human and other vertebrate animals，functions vary from regulation of glycogen, protein synthesis, detoxification to bile production and son on. While the liver vasculature is essential for liver development, function maintaince under homeostasis and regeneration after injury, its developmental origin and program remains unknown. Take the close spatial location between developing endocardium and liver, and the high proliferation and migration ability of endocardium, we hypothesis that endocardium endothelial cells may act as one possible origin of hepatic vasculature. By genetic lineage tracing of endocardium using Nfatc1-Dre, we unexpectedly found that endocardium endothelial cells contribute to liver vessels and constitute about 40% of embryonic liver vasculature. Next we will verify this phenomenon by more independent tools and identify the exact location of endocardium that will contribute to live vessels and explore its function during liver development and regeneration. Our work will unravel the developmental origin of liver vasculature，and provide new avenues for therapeutic strategies to stimulate revascularization upon liver regeneration