Liver-Specific Protein: More Questions Than Answers

Abstract

Necrosis of liver cells, regardless of initiating process, depends ultimately on destruction of the cell plasma membrane. As a result, there has been an increasing emphasis on the role of alterations of cell-surface membranes in hepatocellular disease and especially on characterization of liver-cell-surface antigens. Meyer zum Büschenfelde and his colleagues have described two liver-specific antigens obtained from supernatants of human liver homogenates.¹ They found three peaks after column chromatography, only the first of which contained liver-specific antigenic material. Approximately 40 per cent of this peak was composed of other, uncharacterized plasma proteins. Subsequent fractionation of this peak yielded two liver . . .