Biliary epithelial cells proliferate during oxygenated liver culture.

Biliary complications remain a major source of morbidity in liver transplant patients. Among these complications, nonanastomotic biliary strictures (NAS) are especially common and they are frequently therapy resistant in part because biliary epithelial cells are more sensitive to warm ischemic injury than hepatocytes. It has been a challenge to maintain the physiological function of biliary epithelial cells during liver transplantation.

Growing a whole porcine liver organ ex situ for six hours without red blood cells or hemoglobin.

Unlabelled: Liver transplantation is an effective approach to end-stage liver disease. Shortage of donor liver and increased waiting time for liver transplantation necessitate the development of an organ culture system by which livers can be cultured and maintained ex situ for a prolonged period of time. The aim of this work is to test whether cell culture condition in vitro could be used to culture whole livers ex situ without the use of erythrocytes.

A quality comparison of protein crystals grown under containerless conditions generated by diamagnetic levitation, silicone oil and agarose gel.

High-quality crystals are key to obtaining accurate three-dimensional structures of proteins using X-ray diffraction techniques. However, obtaining such protein crystals is often a challenge. Several containerless crystallization techniques have been reported to have the ability to improve crystal quality, but it is unknown which is the most favourable way to grow high-quality protein crystals.

An investigation of the effects of self-assembled monolayers on protein crystallisation.

Most protein crystallisation begins from heterogeneous nucleation; in practice, crystallisation typically occurs in the presence of a solid surface in the solution. The solid surface provides a nucleation site such that the energy barrier for nucleation is lower on the surface than in the bulk solution. Different types of solid surfaces exhibit different surface energies, and the nucleation barriers depend on the characteristics of the solid surfaces.