**2. Morphology**

The structure of hepatocytes is polyhedral in nature. It contains many faces but generally it is 6 in number. These faces are connected with face of other hepatocytes or in some cases it is in contact with sinusoids. Hepatocytes generally have diameters around 20 to 30 μm. They have a round shaped nucleus in the center of cytoplasm. Approximately 25% of hepatocytes found in an adult human contain two nuclei instead of one. Most of these nuclei contains twice the number of chromosomes than a normal cell; thus are deemed tetraploid. In the nuclei, heterochromatin are scattered. The presence of mitotic hepatocytes is not seen generally in normal conditions. However their number increases in conditions like liver injury or in the process of regeneration. Depending upon the physiological state, the cytoplasm of the hepatic cell varies and is influenced by fat or glycogen depots. In a hepatocyte, as many as 100 mitochondria can be seen. Moreover the number of Golgi apparatus found in a hepatocytes accounts to approximately 50. Each Golgi apparatus are arranged in 3–5 cisterns. These cisterns are located near biliary canaliculi, small canal like structures that collecting the bile secreted by hepatocytes. Peroxisomes found in hepatocytes are in numbers of 200 or 300 which is more than found in normal cells (**Figure 1**, **Table 1**) [3].
