Figure 3
From: Regenerative medicine for the kidney: stem cell prospects & challenges
Kidney growth and compensatory hypertrophy occurs in healthy kidneys. (A) Nephrons are produced during kidney ontogeny, and subsequently grow during juvenile/adolescent life, thus exhibiting hypertrophy with age in response to changing demands on renal use and net nephron functionality throughout the kidneys. (B) Following unilateral nephrectomy, there is a dramatic compensatory hypertrophy response in animal models, in which the kidney expands in size due to the hypertrophy of individual nephrons.