The role of Kupffer cells in hepatic iron and lipid metabolism

Macrophages perform distinct 'accessory' functions in their tissue of residence.1 Comparison of the transcriptome of Kupffer cells (KCs) with other macrophages found that KCs express genes associated with iron and lipid metabolism.2 All proteins proposed to be involved in iron and lipid uptake, processing and export shown here have been found to be highly expressed by KCs (bulk transcriptomics,2) and not to be expressed by contaminating cells by single-cell transcriptomics (unpublished data).