An image from Berfin Azizoglu’s team showing the vascular organization underlying blood drainage from the liver wins the School of Medicine’s 2024 Art in Science Competition!
A snapshot of this image’s research significance
What does this image show?
This image shows the three-dimensional vascular organization of the adult mouse liver. The liver has two lobes, each comprised of thousands of hexagonally shaped lobules containing liver cells. This image zooms into a single liver lobule. Blood enters the liver lobule through peripheral vessels, shown in a teal-like color at the edge of the image. It travels through irregularly shaped liver capillaries called sinusoids, shown in yellow, and tiny blood vessels called venules, shown in magenta. Finally, it drains through a central vein, seen in this image as a black hole in the lobule center. Blood drainage from the liver is essential for removing metabolic end products and detoxified substances from the body.
How does this image help advance the research of the Azizoglu lab group?
Berfin Azizoglu’s research team studies how the mammalian liver regenerates. They visualize the normal mouse liver at the organ scale with cellular resolution and compare it to injured livers to assess how the organization of the liver, its lobules, and vasculature change over time following injury and during recovery. Identifying these alterations sheds light on the mechanisms used by the liver to restore physiology and function in response to damage.
How was this image taken?
This maximum projection image was taken as a z-stack using a Leica SP8 confocal microscope at the Department of Cell Biology and Physiology.