Fig. 1: Novel liver lobule marker reveals generation of lobules after birth.

a–a’, Thick section of the adult mouse liver immunostained for the lobule boundary marker EPCR and the venous endothelial marker Endomucin. a”, Schematic representation of the lobule. b, c’ Thick section of the liver immunostained for the lobule boundary marker EPCR from 1 week- and 8 week-old mice. Dotted lines delineate lobules. d Increase in absolute liver weight over postnatal time for n = 4 (newborn, male), n = 6 (1 week, male), n = 7 (2 weeks, male), n = 5 (3 weeks, male), n = 5 (4 weeks, male), and n = 6 (8 weeks, male) mice. Brown-Forsythe Anova test and Dunnett’s multiple comparisons test performed. For clarity, differences between consecutive ages are shown. Adjusted p-values from left to right: <0.0001, 0.0126, 0.0049, 0.1526, 0.0002. e Liver-to-body weight ratio as percentage for n = 6 (1 week, male), n = 7 (2 weeks, male), n = 5 (4 weeks, male), and n = 6 (8 weeks, male) mice. Brown-Forsythe Anova test and Dunnett’s multiple comparisons test performed. For clarity, differences between consecutive ages are shown. Adjusted p-values from left to right: 0.0911, 0.0002, 0.3906. f Violin plot shows the distance from the central vein to portal vessels at lobule boundaries in livers of 2 week-, 4 week-, and 8-week-old male mice. Red bars represent the mean. A total of n = 210 (2 weeks), n = 147 (4 weeks), and n = 162 (8 weeks) lobules were scored in 3 mice per group. Brown-Forsythe Anova test and Dunnett’s multiple comparisons test, adjusted p-values from left to right: <0.0001, > 0.9999. g The total number of lobules in one whole liver lobe of 1 week-old (n = 3) and 8-week-old (n = 6) male mice. Mean values ± s.d. shown. Unpaired t-test, p-value = 0.0002. h–h’, Volumetric images of whole liver lobes iDisco-cleared and immunostained for the lobule boundary marker EPCR are shown in surface view in h and slice view in h’. ns, not significant. DAPI in blue depicts nuclei. Source data are provided in the Fig. 1 Source Data file.