The liver that caveolin built

Regeneration after liver damage requires caveolin and lipid droplets, according to Manuel Fernández, Cecilia Albor (Universitat de Barcelona, Spain), Albert Pol, Robert Parton (University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia), and colleagues. The results suggest that caveolin helps process or package storage lipids, and that the system somehow communicates with the cell cycle machinery.

Caveolin is best known as an essential component of ordered plasma membrane domains called caveolae. Besides overseeing signaling and sorting in caveolae, caveolin has also been seen around lipid droplets after partial hepatectomy. These lipid droplets have a core of storage lipids surrounded by a single monolayer of phospholipids. They are thought to bud from the ER membrane after forming between its two leaflets.

In partially hepatectomized mice lacking caveolin, the group found that initial events were intact:...