Building a bile duct: from molecular mechanics to tissue patterning

The bile duct is a complex network of tubes in the liver and is essential for normal liver function. For a bile duct to function, ducts needs to grow with the correct dimensions and form a continuous network to facilitate fluid transport. But how is this achieved? In this seminar Luke will present his recent work exploring how in the developing mammalian embryo ducts coordinate biomechanical information such that groups of ductular cells elongate and intercalate to form a continuous biliary network. Having discussed how ducts form he’ll then explore what happens when tissue patterning goes wrong and specifically address how loss of primary cilia drives duct widening and polycystic disease, the most common monogenic disease in the human population. Importantly, many of the common biomechanical factors that promote healthy duct development are deregulated in polycystic disease and represent a novel, therapeutically tractable mechanism which can be manipulated to reduce the progression of polycystic liver disease.