Influence of ornithine on albumin synthesis by fetal and neonatal hepatocytes maintained in culture.

Fetal rat as well as fetal and neonatal human hepatocytes were cultured in an arginine-free medium with or without L-ornithine. This amino acid was found greatly to improve cell survival of both rat and human parenchymal cells and to favour their proliferation. In addition, L-ornithine appeared to modulate the expression of various functions and particularly to increase albumin secretion. Since a correlated increase of the corresponding mRNA was observed, it may be postulated that L-ornithine acts at a pre-translational level.