NEWS - Wild cylindrical pythons, a few centimeters in diameter and several feet long, can stretch as long as a power pole and swallow a deer or crocodile whole. They fast for long periods of time, but when they eat large amounts of food, they don’t cause any tissue damage.
In the first 24 hours after devouring a large prey item, the tissues soften dramatically, while the heart grows 25% and becomes more tense until the pulse rate doubles. The blood flow turns milky white because of circulating fat, but surprisingly it is healthy rather than damaging to the tissue.
A large group of special genes kick into action to help increase metabolism by a factor of forty. Two weeks later, after the food has been digested, all systems are back to normal, the heart remains slightly larger and even stronger than before.
The researchers report that this remarkable process could inspire new treatments for the heart condition cardiac fibrosis and a number of other modern human diseases that are miraculously able to do so by giant snakes. Pythons have mechanisms to protect the heart from things that could be harmful.
“Pythons can go months or even a year in the wild without eating and then eat something larger than their own body mass and nothing bad happens to them,” says Leslie Leinwand of the University of Colorado at Boulder, who has been studying pythons for nearly two decades.
“Most people use rats and mice as animal models to study disease and health, but there’s a lot to learn from animals like pythons that have evolved ways to survive in extreme environments,” Leinwand says.
Pythons have healthy heart development similar to that of elite athletes. The researchers found that well-fed snakes’ hearts enlarge, with bundles of specialized heart muscle called myofibrils softening dramatically and contracting with 50% more force.
They have different metabolites in their blood, genes that are turned on or off to change metabolism and the strength of contractions. More research is needed to identify the exact genes and metabolites that are at play. Several things may be driving pythons’ hearts to burn fat instead of sugar for fuel.
Original research
Claudia Crocini et al (2024). Postprandial cardiac hypertrophy is sustained by mechanics, epigenetic, and metabolic reprogramming in pythons. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 121 (36) e2322726121 DOI:10.1073/pnas.2322726121
In the first 24 hours after devouring a large prey item, the tissues soften dramatically, while the heart grows 25% and becomes more tense until the pulse rate doubles. The blood flow turns milky white because of circulating fat, but surprisingly it is healthy rather than damaging to the tissue.
A large group of special genes kick into action to help increase metabolism by a factor of forty. Two weeks later, after the food has been digested, all systems are back to normal, the heart remains slightly larger and even stronger than before.
The researchers report that this remarkable process could inspire new treatments for the heart condition cardiac fibrosis and a number of other modern human diseases that are miraculously able to do so by giant snakes. Pythons have mechanisms to protect the heart from things that could be harmful.
“Pythons can go months or even a year in the wild without eating and then eat something larger than their own body mass and nothing bad happens to them,” says Leslie Leinwand of the University of Colorado at Boulder, who has been studying pythons for nearly two decades.
“Most people use rats and mice as animal models to study disease and health, but there’s a lot to learn from animals like pythons that have evolved ways to survive in extreme environments,” Leinwand says.
Pythons have healthy heart development similar to that of elite athletes. The researchers found that well-fed snakes’ hearts enlarge, with bundles of specialized heart muscle called myofibrils softening dramatically and contracting with 50% more force.
They have different metabolites in their blood, genes that are turned on or off to change metabolism and the strength of contractions. More research is needed to identify the exact genes and metabolites that are at play. Several things may be driving pythons’ hearts to burn fat instead of sugar for fuel.
Original research
Claudia Crocini et al (2024). Postprandial cardiac hypertrophy is sustained by mechanics, epigenetic, and metabolic reprogramming in pythons. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 121 (36) e2322726121 DOI:10.1073/pnas.2322726121