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The main liver cells are called hepatocytes; however, there are other cells that can be observed in a liver sample such as Kupffer cells (macrophages). [2] The liver is the biggest gland of the body. It has a wide variety of functions that range from the destruction of old blood cells to the control of the whole metabolism of macromolecules . [ 3 ]
The typical hepatocyte is cubical with sides of 20-30 μm, (in comparison, a human hair has a diameter of 17 to 180 μm). [1] The typical volume of a hepatocyte is 3.4 x 10 −9 cm 3. [2] Smooth endoplasmic reticulum is abundant in hepatocytes, in contrast to most other cell types. [3]
In histology (microscopic anatomy), the lobules of liver, or hepatic lobules, are small divisions of the liver defined at the microscopic scale. The hepatic lobule is a building block of the liver tissue, consisting of portal triads, hepatocytes arranged in linear cords between a capillary network, and a central vein.
A liver sinusoid is a type of capillary known as a sinusoidal capillary, discontinuous capillary or sinusoid, that is similar to a fenestrated capillary, having discontinuous endothelium that serves as a location for mixing of the oxygen-rich blood from the hepatic artery and the nutrient-rich blood from the portal vein.
Periportal Kupffer cells tend to be larger and have more lysosomal enzyme and phagocytic activity, whereas centrilobular Kupffer cells create more superoxide radical. Kupffer cells are amoeboid in character, with surface features including microvilli , pseudopodia and lamellipodia , which project in every direction.
There, hepatocytes extract bile acids very efficiently, and little escapes the healthy liver into systemic circulation. The net effect of enterohepatic recirculation is that each bile salt molecule is reused about 20 times, often multiple times during a single digestive phase.
The LSECs contain 45% and 17% of the liver's total mass of pinocytic vesicles and lysosomes, and contain twice as many clathrin-coated pits per membrane unit, compared with two other major liver cells, Kupffer cells and hepatocytes, [5] reflecting the high capacity clathrin-mediated endocytic activity of LSECs.
It has been stated that, "hepatocytes secrete more than 560 types of hepatokines, many of which regulate metabolic and inflammatory diseases in the liver or at distant organs through circulation delivery." [2] Hepatocytes can secrete multiple hepatokines into the blood. In particular, these hepatokines, similar to hypothalamic hormones and ...