-
- Academic Editor
-
-
-
Background: Mesenchymal cells, including hepatic stellate cells (HSCs),
fibroblasts (FBs), myofibroblasts (MFBs), and vascular smooth muscle cells
(VSMCs), are the main cells that affect liver fibrosis and play crucial roles in
maintaining tissue homeostasis. The dynamic evolution of mesenchymal cells is
very important but remains to be explored for researching the reversible
mechanism of hepatic fibrosis and its evolution mechanism of hepatic fibrosis to
cirrhosis. Methods: Here, we analysed the transcriptomes of more than
50,000 human single cells from three cirrhotic and three healthy liver tissue
samples and the mouse hepatic mesenchymal cells of two healthy and two fibrotic
livers to reconstruct the evolutionary trajectory of hepatic mesenchymal cells
from a healthy to a cirrhotic state, and a subsequent integrative analysis of
bulk RNA sequencing (RNA-seq) data of HSCs from quiescent to active (using
transforming growth factor