Large-Scale Profiling of Signaling Pathways Reveals a Distinct Demarcation between Normal and Extended Liver Resection.

Despite numerous studies addressing normal liver regeneration, we still lack comprehensive understanding of the biological processes underlying failed liver regeneration. Therefore, we analyzed the activity of 271 intracellular signaling pathways (ISPs) by genome wide profiling of differentially expressed RNAs in murine liver tissue biopsies after normal hepatectomy (nHx; 68% of liver removed) and extended hepatectomy (eHx; 86% of liver removed). Comprehensive, genome-wide transcriptome profiling using RNAseq was performed in liver tissue obtained from mice (sham, nHx, and eHx) harvested 1, 8, 16, 32, and 48 h after operation (n = 3 per group) and the OncoFinder toolkit was used for an unsupervised, unbiased identification of intracellular signaling pathways (ISP) activity. We observed that the normal regenerative process requires a transient activation and silencing of approximately two dozen of ISPs. After nHx, the represented with 13 branches, the and the dominated. After eHx, the and two of its branches () dominated, as well as the . Further, 14 ISPs demonstrated a strong inverse regulation, with the and the as chief activators after nHx, and the as the dominating constraining response after eHx.