{"doi":"10.3389/fnetp.2023.1144186","title":"Geometric and network organization of visceral organ epithelium","abstract":"Mammalian epithelia form a continuous sheet of cells that line the surface of visceral organs. To analyze the epithelial organization of the heart, lung, liver and bowel, epithelial cells were labeled in situ , isolated as a single layer and imaged as large epithelial digitally combine montages. The stitched epithelial images were analyzed for geometric and network organization. Geometric analysis demonstrated a similar polygon distribution in all organs with the greatest variability in the heart epithelia. Notably, the normal liver and inflated lung demonstrated the largest average cell surface area ( p < 0.01). In lung epithelia, characteristic wavy or interdigitated cell boundaries were observed. The prevalence of interdigitations increased with lung inflation. To complement the geometric analyses, the epithelia were converted into a network of cell-to-cell contacts. Using the open-source software EpiGraph, subgraph (graphlet) frequencies were used to characterize epithelial organization and compare to mathematical (Epi-Hexagon), random (Epi-Random) and natural (Epi-Voronoi5) patterns. As expected, the patterns of the lung epithelia were independent of lung volume. In contrast, liver epithelia demonstrated a pattern distinct from lung, heart and bowel epithelia ( p < 0.05). We conclude that geometric and network analyses can be useful tools in characterizing fundamental differences in mammalian tissue topology and epithelial organization.","journal":"Frontiers in Network Physiology","year":2023,"id":383317,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":2,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9404,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2023-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":940999,"name":"Joseph Sutlive","orcid":"0000-0003-0260-1072","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":373739,"name":"Willi L. Wagner","orcid":"0000-0002-2748-5429","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":724602,"name":"Hassan A. Khalil","orcid":"0000-0002-3835-1290","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":256308,"name":"Zi Chen","orcid":"0000-0001-5927-0249","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":373742,"name":"Maximilian Ackermann","orcid":"0000-0001-9996-2477","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":373747,"name":"Steven J. Mentzer","orcid":"0000-0003-1496-6044","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":941555,"name":"Betty S. Liu","orcid":null,"position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":33,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T01:17:25.158896Z","pmid":"37234691","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}