Studying liver regeneration by means of molecular biology: how far we are in interpreting the findings?

Liver regeneration in mammals is a unique phenomenon attracting scientific interest for decades. It is a valuable model for basic biology research of cell cycle control as well as for clinically oriented studies of wide and heterogeneous group of liver diseases. This article provides a concise review of current knowledge about the liver regeneration, focusing mainly on rat partial hepatectomy model. The three main recognized phases of the regenerative response are described. The article also summarizes history of molecular biology approaches to the topic and finally comments on obstacles in interpreting the data obtained from large scale microarray-based gene expression analyses.