A liver transplanted from one animal into another will grow or shrink to fit its new host

Sunday, March 16, 2014 by: David Gutierrez, staff writer
Tags: liver, interspecies transplants, organ regeneration

(NaturalNews) The liver is one of the few organs in the human body that is capable of true regeneration, completely growing back without scar tissue even if a large portion of it is surgically removed.

Unlike most other cells, liver cells never lose the memory of how to grow a new organ.

This capacity contributes to another unique characteristic of the liver: It can grow or shrink to match the size of its host's body.

For example, if the liver from a large dog is transplanted into the body of a small dog, the liver will quickly shrink to the appropriate size for its new host's abdomen.

This remarkable ability is partially responsible for the effectiveness of liver transplants; a child can receive a transplant consisting of only a portion of the liver of one of their parents, for example.

The "resizing" ability of the liver has been observed in interspecies transplants as well. Baboon livers transplanted into humans have been observed to swiftly grow to full human liver size.

Sources:

http://www.vivo.colostate.edu