Liver: Transport and Metabolic

functions
 Objectives
• Functional anatomy of liver and bile
system

• Bile formation and secretion

• Enterhepatic circulation of bile acids

• Ammonia handling by liver

 Liver
• Largest and most important metabolic
organ in the body
• Body’s major biochemical factory
• Importance to digestive system – secretion
of bile salts
 Liver
• Functions not related to digestion
– Metabolic processing of the major categories of
nutrients
– Detoxifying or degrading body wastes and hormones,
drugs, and other foreign compounds
– Synthesizes plasma proteins
– Stores glycogen, fats, iron, copper, and many vitamins
– Activates vitamin D
– Removes bacteria and worn-out red blood cells
– Excretes cholesterol and bilirubin
Blood flow through splanchnic
circulation in fasting human
Hepatic lobule
Interrelationships of major cell
types in the liver
Functional anatomy of biliary
system
Primary and secondary bile acids of
bile
Daily cholesterol balance in healthy
human
 Liver
• Bile
– Actively secreted by liver and actively diverted to gallbladder
between meals
– Stored and concentrated in gallbladder
– Consists of
• Bile salts
• Cholesterol
• Lecithin
• Bilirubin
– After meal, bile enters duodenum
• Bile salts
– Derivatives of cholesterol
– Convert large fat globules into a liquid emulsion
– After participation in fat digestion and absorption, most are
reabsorbed into the blood
 Schematic
Structure and
Function
of Bile Salts
Schematic Representation of a
Micelle
Pathways of entery of solutes into
bile
Transport in cholangicytes that
secrete alkaline-rich fluid
Concentration of bile in gallbladder
Ducts and Gallbladder
 Neurohumoral control of
gallbladder contraction and bile
secretion
Enterohepatic Circulation of Bile
Salt
Urea cycle
Ammonium homeostasis in health