What would it be like to eat everything sugar What do you wish didn’t affect your health? Without a doubt, this would be a dream for many people. There is no person with such a superpower, but there is an animal. Well, there may be more, but there is one that has caught the attention of scientists: fruit bat. Unlike other species, their diet is almost exclusively based on fruit, so the concentration of glucose that accumulates in their blood is enormous. If a person ate like this, he would be meat. diabetes. However, these bats do not have any harmful effects on their health.
For this reason, a group of scientists from several American research centers conducted a study aimed at analyzing the genetic weapons they use to prevent excess glucose from even tickling their pancreas. The goal is nothing less than to use the knowledge gained to research new treatments diabetes in humans.
Of course, it won’t be easy. However, the start of these studies could not be more promising. They have found the weapon they have been looking for, and now all that remains is to see how to add to its human arsenal. This is where the biggest challenge lies, but it is certainly a good start.
Fruit Bats Ace in the Hole
These scientists wanted to know what makes bats special. So they decided to compare them with other bats that had a different diet. They chose big brown bat (Epthesicus fucus), which feeds primarily on insects, and compared it to one of the approximately 200 extant species of fruit bats: Jamaican fruit bat (Artibeus Jamaican).
They took DNA samples from both and began comparing them, focusing on the genes and regulatory sequences of the two organs most involved in glucose metabolism: pancreas and kidneys.
It should be noted that DNA consists of more than just genes. They represent approximately 2% of this and these are the ones that contain instructions for the functioning of the cells of the said organism. The rest is primarily regulatory sequences that determine under what circumstances these instructions are or are not used. Therefore, their analysis was very important in this case.
The pancreas is ready for anything
The pancreas plays an important role in glucose metabolism and is closely associated with diabetes due to its role in the secretion of two hormones. On the one side insulin, which is released when there is excess glucose in the blood and helps cells absorb it so that it does not accumulate. And, on the other hand, glucagon. It has the opposite effect as it is responsible for increasing blood glucose levels when there is a deficiency.
The study authors saw that fruit bats had more cells that produce insulin and glucagon. In addition, they have more regulatory sequences that stimulate these cells to produce these hormones and react to too much or too little glucose. The result of all this is that they always maintain a perfect balance, which is ideal for diabetic patients.
What happens to the kidneys?
In the case of the kidneys, their function is to filter waste accumulated in the blood and maintain a balance between levels water and salt.
By eating so much fruit, these bats aren’t just storing up glucose. They will also have very thin blood due to excess water in their diet. For this reason, they have a cellular balance that allows them to use the small amount of salt they receive in their diet and excrete more water than other species.
How does all this help people with diabetes?
Fruit bats can never develop diabetes because they are able to make the most of glucose. Therefore, once the genome sequences associated with this ability were discovered, these scientists took the first step towards development of treatment methods.
They couldn’t start directly with people, so they took the first step with mice. For this, They edited the DNA of rodents, eliminating their pancreas-related DNA regulatory sequences and replacing them with those of fruit bats. If they can get them to use glucose like flying mammals do, that would be a big step.
But this is not the only thing left to give them. They want to do the same procedure with other organs of bats that are somehow involved in glucose metabolism. For example, liver and small intestine. This would force them to further refine the strategy, which, again, would first be tested in mice. They are very far from finding a cure for diabetes in humans, but little by little they are finding which pieces to touch. This is a good place to start.
Source: Hiper Textual
