BriefDefinitive Report HETEROGENEOUS LOBULAR DISTRIBUTION OF HEPATOCYTES EXPRESSING ACUTE-PHASE GENES DURING THE ACUTE INFLAMMATORY REACTION

Although a zonal distribution of hepatocytes expressing various metabolic functions in liver lobule has been described (1), it is still debated whether functional heterogeneity in the lobule also occurs with respect to plasma protein synthesis, an important function ofhepatocytes . Acute-phase reactants are a group of secretory proteins with dramatically altered rates of synthesis during the acute-phase response of the liver (2) . In this article we analyze the hepatic cellular distribution of the mRNA and protein products of three acute-phase genes, «2-macroglobulin (a2M), alinhibitor 3 (a1I3), and al-antitrypsin (ooPI) . a2M is a major acute-phase reactant in rats with drastically increased hepatic mRNA concentrations after turpentine injection (3) . Concomitantly, the steady-state levels of atl3 mRNA are decreased (4) . a1PI is only a moderately reacting acute-phase protein in the rat (5) . Here we investigate specifically whether hepatocytes expressing these three genes show a specialized location in normal rat livers and whether their topographic distribution is altered during the acute inflammatory reaction (AIR) .