A spatial atlas of the healthy human liver from live donors
, we analysed 16 liver samples: 8 from young live healthy donors and 8 from individuals with liver pathology, sampling 'adjacent normal' tissue. Livers from live healthy donors displayed significant gene expression differences compared with the adjacent normal tissues from individuals with liver pathology. Hepatocytes and non-parenchymal cells exhibited marked zonation along the porto-central axis of the liver lobules, with key functions being pericentrally shifted compared to mice and other mammals. Our atlas identified dynamic programmes in early steatotic hepatocytes, including a decline in nuclear-encoded mitochondrial proteins and a compensatory increase in mitochondria-encoded transcripts. This study presents a spatial gene expression reference for the healthy human liver and insights into hepatocyte changes in early steatosis.
Authors
- Rouven Hoefflin (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5197-453X)
- Dana Hirsch (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8575-0964)
- Ofra Golani (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9793-236X)
- Yael Korem Kohanim (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0004-4361-2805)
- Ido Nachmany (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0003-2612-8555)
- Amichay Afriat (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5067-1887)
- Shalev Itzkovitz (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0685-2522)
- Oran Yakubovsky (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8849-6615)
- Chen Mayer (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7871-6338)
- Yoseph Addadi (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9827-0436)
- Ron Pery
- Inna Goliand (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1595-5366)
- Adi Egozi
- Yotam Harnik (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5099-3328)
- Merav Kedmi (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3289-8818)
- Tal Barkai (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1323-8117)
- Roy Novoselsky (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4464-0179)
- Sapir Shir
- K Bahar Halpern
- Lena Prichislov
- Niv Pencovich
- Timucin Taner
- Liat Fellus-Alyagor
- Hadas Keren-Shaul
Institutions
- Mayo Clinic (US)
- University of Freiburg (DE)
- Tel Aviv University (IL)
- Princeton University (US)
- Sheba Medical Center (IL)
- WinnMed (US)
- Yale University (US)
- Mayo Clinic in Arizona (US)
- Weizmann Institute of Science (IL)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Nature
- Published
- 2026-04-15
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-026-10377-y
- Primary Topic
- Single-cell and spatial transcriptomics
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00