In the first 24 hours after a python devours its massive prey, its heart grows 25%, its cardiac tissue softens dramatically, and the organ squeezes harder and harder to more than double its pulse. Meanwhile, a vast collection of specialized genes kicks into action to help boost the snake's metabolism fortyfold. Two weeks later, after its feast has been digested, all systems return to normal-; its heart remaining just slightly larger, and even stronger, than before.
This extraordinary process, described by CU Boulder researchers in the journal PNAS , could ultimately inspire novel treatments for a common human heart condition called cardiac fibrosis, in which heart tissue stiffens, as well as a host of other modern-day ailments that the monstrous snakes seem to miraculously resist. Pythons can go months or even a year in the wild without eating and then consume something greater than their own body mass, yet nothing bad happens to them. We believe they possess mechanisms that protect their hearts from things that would be harmful to humans.
This study goes a long way toward mapping out what those are." Leslie Leinwand, Study Senior Author and Professor, Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology, University of Colorado Boulder Leinwand is also a chief scientific officer of the BioFrontiers Institute. Leinwand first started studying pythons nearly two decades ago, and her lab remains one of the few in the world looking to the constricting, non-venomous reptiles for clues to.