LiSyM: Liver Systems Medicine

One of the tasks of the healthy liver is to store fat. Yet, at some stage, too much fat makes the liver sick. One critical time point occurs when a healthy fatty liver becomes inflamed and progresses to steatohepatitis, or NASH. LiSyM-Pillar I will identify what events lead to this transition. Does it occur in all parts of the liver? Which molecules indicate that it is taking place? Can the degeneration be stopped or undone - and if so, how?

In one in five people with NAFLD, the functioning liver cells, the hepatocytes, are replaced by connective tissue. Eventually this fibrosis becomes irreversible. In this state the liver is like a ‘scar that never heals’. Through it, the liver loses many of its vital functions. LiSyM-Pillar II wants to know more about which factors promote fibrosis and the conditions under which fibrosis becomes irreversible How can fibrosis be diagnosed as early as possible? Researchers in the pillar are also ...

In chronic diseases, at some point the liver can suddenly stop functioning. This is called acute-on-chronic liver failure, or ACLF. This is the leading cause of death in liver patients and is often provoked by the use of transcription or freely available drugs or alcohol abuse. For this condition we need an effective treatment quickly. LiSyM-Pillar III researches the factors that contribute significantly to ACLF. What exactly happens then? Are there any early signs that would enable ACLF to be ...

Major infrastructure backbone of the whole LiSyM network. It comprises the core management tasks of the program directorate and the scientific project management, as well as the central data management. The data management concept relies on FAIRDOM (http://fair-dom.org) and uses the LiSyM SEEK platform as a major hub for exchanging data, models, SOPs and other information, as well as yellow pages for the projects with its corresponding members, institutions, events, presentations and publications. ...

Dr. Madlen Matz-Soja (University of Leipzig) investigates the importance of a control mechanism - the hedgehog signaling pathway - for fatty liver disease. She has shown that the signaling pathway directs how liver cells in NAFLD accumulate fat. Hedgehog also affects sex hormones in the liver. Therefore, Matz-Soya hopes to clarify why women and men suffer from cirrhosis and liver cancer with varying degrees of frequency.

To investigate the underlying molecular principles of metabolic and morphogenic zonation of the human liver lobule, we generated an integrated epigenetic map across three zones (pericentral, intermediate and periportal) by methylation and transcriptomic analysis of hepatocytes captured by laser micro-dissection. We observe a deep link between epigenetic zonation of human liver and a zonated expression of metabolic and morphogenic pathways: Key transcriptionally zonated enzymes in xenobiotic and ...

Liver macrophages (LMs) play a central role in acute and chronic liver pathologies. In our study, we sought to gain further insight into the role of LMs in different liver pathologies and into their characteristics after isolation from liver tissue. Here we will characterize LMs in human liver tissue sections using immunohistochemistry and bioinformatic image analysis. We investigate liver tissues characterized by antiinflammatory LMs which show a homogeneous distribution and increased cell numbers ...

We face a crisis in reproducibility, where it is impossible to believe most of the computational results shown in conferences and papers. Recent replication efforts and theoretical considerations indicate that most published research findings in biomedical research are wrong. This is especially problematic for the translation of computational models into the clinics. Modelling standards, software, and community initiatives are fundamental for reproducibility in systems biology and systems medicine. ...

Test for SEEK API upload.

Introduction: The field of pharmacokinetics describe the kinetics of substances administered to the body, consisting of absorption, distribution, metabolization and elimination (ADME) of the substance. An important use case is the testing of liver function via test substances like caffeine, methacetin or galactose in dynamical liver function tests. Understanding the kinetics of test substances and drugs is crucial to evaluate therapeutic outcome and diagnostic value.

Results: Physiologically based ...

The study comprises 19 human liver biopsy donors divided into the groups normal control (NC = 7012, 7173, 7194, 7279), healthy obese (HO = 6758, 6922, 7213, 7230, 7252), bland steatosis (STEA = 6967, 7137, 7172, 7181, 7251) and early NASH (EARLY = 6610, 7041, 7157, 7188, 7344). Hepatocytes captured by laser microdissection were obtained from three hepatic zones (pericentral, intermediate and periportal) and subjected to reduced representation bisulfite sequencing and RNA-seq resulting in 114 ...

In this study, we investigated human LMs in tissue sections as well as isolated from human liver tissues which were characterized both in suspension and in adherent cultures to find out whether the inflammatory state of primary human LMs corresponds to patients and disease characteristics and whather it is possible to maintain the macrophage pattern in suspension as well as in adherent cultures with just a few limitations. (CCA: cholangiocarcinoma, CRLM: colorectal liver metastasis, FNH: focal ...

Transcriptomic analysis of hepatocytes captured by laser micro-dissection from hepatic zone: periportal (PP)

Transcriptomic analysis of hepatocytes captured by laser micro-dissection from hepatic zone: intermediate (IZ)

DNA-methylation at binding sites of uniformly expressed transcription factors in human hepatocytes ; hepatic zone: intermediate (IZ)

Transcriptomic analysis of hepatocytes captured by laser micro-dissection from hepatic zone: pericentral (CV)

DNA-methylation at binding sites of uniformly expressed transcription factors in human hepatocytes ; hepatic zone: pericentral (CV)

Human RNA-Seq data set GSM2819712 stored in NCBI (GEO)

Human RNA-Seq data set GSM2819698 stored in NCBI (GEO)

liver tissue sample : 6922IZRNA

Human RNA-Seq data set GSM2819714 stored in NCBI (GEO)

Human RNA-Seq data set GSM2819713 stored in NCBI (GEO)

Human RNA-Seq data set GSM2819711 stored in NCBI (GEO)

Taken from https://github.com/Benchmarking-Initiative/Benchmark-Models See the github repository for license Import and execute the model in d2d

Taken from https://github.com/Benchmarking-Initiative/Benchmark-Models License according to the github repository's license Import and execute with d2d

not yet calibrated, not yet reduced

ODE model describes dynamics of IFNalpha-induced signaling in Huh7.5 cells for a time scale up to 32 hours after stimulation with IFNalpha. The model consists of an IFN receptor model, formation/degradation and cytoplasmic/nuclear shuttling of STAT1-homodimers, STAT1-STAT2-heterodimers and STAT1-STAT2-IRF9 (ISGF3) complexes. On top, formation of feedback proteins STAT1, STAT2, IRF9, USP18, SOCS1, SOCS3 and IRF2 and corresponding influences on IFNalpha signaling dynamics was incorporated. The model ...

The model is adapted from A.P. Kupinski, I. Raabe, M. Michel, D. Ail, L. Brusch, T. Weidemann, C. Bökel (2013) Phosphorylation of the Smo tail is controlled by membrane localization and is dispensable for clustering, J. Cell Sci., 126, 20, 4684-4697 https://doi.org/10.1242/jcs.128926

The model format is MorpheusML that can readily be loaded and run in Morpheus: https://morpheus.gitlab.io

SOP : liver tissue microdissection for RNA sequencing

The purpose of this document is to define procedures to follow for exchanging the following items between collaboration partners within the LiSyM network: a) Exchanging samples of human origin obtained from a natural person (i.e. a patient or other human subject). b) Exchanging material derived from samples of human origin as defined in a). c) Exchanging associated data describing samples of human origin and derived material as defined in a) and b). d) Exchanging data derived from samples of human ...

Non-parenchymal liver cells are isolated and staining for FACS analysis

Macrophage staining in paraffin-embedded tissue

Talk at the Jamboree 2021 about epigenomic map of human liver zonation and loss of zonation in end-stage liver disease

Jamboree presentation

ICSB is one of the largest international conferences on systems biology. Since the first conference in Tokyo in 2000, which was organized by Dr. Hiroaki Kitano, it has been held annually in different countries.

SBMC 2020 was postponed to 10th - 12th of May 2021. Further information will follow soon.

The "Computational Modeling in Biology" Network (COMBINE) is an initiative to coordinate the development of the various community standards and formats in systems biology, systems medicine, synthetic biology and related fields. COMBINE 2020 will be a workshop-style event with invited lectures, oral presentations and posters, but also reserving enough time for afternoon breakout sessions to discuss topics around data and model standardization and integration, as well as harmonization and further ...

The Computational Modeling in Biology Network (COMBINE) is an initiative to coordinate the development of the various community standards and formats in systems biology, synthetic biology and related fields. HARMONY is a codefest-type meeting, with a focus on development of the standards, interoperability and infrastructure. There are generally not many general discussions or oral presentations during HARMONY; instead, the time is devoted to allowing hands-on hacking and interaction between people ...

e:Med brings together leading scientists and exceptional young researchers from all over Germany in the emerging field of Systems Medicine. Systems medicine uses interdisciplinary systems-oriented research on diseases to create a basis for understanding complex physiological and pathological processes for development of innovative personalized diagnosis, therapies, and preventive measures. Key to the appropriate analysis and possibly to the modelling of Big Data derived from information levels ...

Poster for the PhD retreat in Hofgeismar - Svenja Kemmer

Small movie explaining how to associate authors to profiles.