  Partial hepatectomy (PHx) is a surgical intervention where a part of the
liver is removed. Due to its extraordinary capacity to regenerate, the liver is
able to regenerate about two-thirds of its mass within a few weeks.
Nevertheless, in some patients regeneration fails. Understanding the principles
and limitations underlying regeneration may permit to control this process and
prospectively improve the regeneration. Here, we established a simulation model
to mimic the process of regeneration in the liver lobe of a mouse. This model
represents each hepatocyte individually and builds upon a previous
computational model of regeneration of drug induced damage in a single liver
lobule. The present study simulates entire liver lobes that consist of hundreds
to thousands of lobules. It accounts for biomechanical control of cell cycle
progression (Biomechanical Growth Control), which has not been considered in
that previous work. The model reproduced the available experimental
observations only if BGC was taken into account. Interestingly, the model
predicted that BGC minimizes the number of proliferating neighbor cells of a
proliferating cell resulting in a checkerboard-like proliferation pattern.
Moreover, the model predicted different cell proliferation patterns in pigs and
mice that corresponded to data obtained from regenerating tissue of the two
species. In conclusion, the here established model suggest that biomechanical
control mechanisms may play a significant role in liver regeneration after PHx.
