Mitochondrial Roles and Cytoprotection in Chronic Liver Injury

Figure 3

The mitochondria are central organelles in determining cell fate in liver diseases. Hepatocyte cell death is common to many liver diseases. Different stress stimuli can induce death signaling, such as toxic free fatty acids, DNA damage, endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress observed in metabolic disease. In these contexts, mitochondria are essential to determine cell fate, as in hepatocyte the activation of the intrinsic pathway of apoptosis by cell death receptors is not usually sufficient to induce cell death and liberation of proapoptotic factors from mitochondria is a mostly necessary event. Moreover, previous alterations of mitochondrial function causing decreased ATP synthesis can induce a shift from apoptotic to necrotic cell death.