2024-01-12 17:33:33
What would it be like to eat all the sugar What would you like without it affecting your health? Without a doubt, it would be the dream of many people. There is no human being with that superpower, but there is an animal. Well, there are possibly more, but there is one that has caught the attention of scientists: the fruit bat. Unlike other species, they base their diet almost exclusively on fruit, so the concentrations of glucose that accumulate in their blood are immense. If a human ate like this, he would be meat. diabetes. However, these bats do not suffer any harmful effects on their health.
For this reason, a team of scientists from several American research centers has carried out a study aimed at analyzing the genetic weapons they use so that excess glucose does not even tickle their pancreas. The objective is none other than to use what has been learned to investigate new therapies for diabetes in humans.
It won’t be easy, of course. However, the beginnings of this research could not have been more promising. They have found those weapons that they were looking for so much and now all that remains is to see how to add them to the human arsenal. This is where the biggest complication lies, but it has been a good start, of course.
The ace up the sleeve of fruit bats
These scientists wanted to know what makes fruit bats special. Therefore, they decided to compare them with other bats that had a different diet. They chose the big brown bat (Eptesic brown), which feeds mainly on insects, and compared it with one of the around 200 species of fruit bat that exist: the jamaican fruit bat (A Jamaican artist).
They took DNA samples from both and proceeded to compare them, with special attention to genes and regulatory sequences of two of the organs most involved in glucose metabolism: the pancreas and kidneys.
It should be noted that DNA is not made up of only genes. These represent approximately 2% of it and they are those that contain instructions for the functioning of the cells of said organism. The rest are, above all, regulatory sequences, which stipulate under what circumstances those instructions are used or not used. Therefore, analyzing them was very important in this case as well.
A pancreas prepared for everything
The pancreas has an essential role in glucose metabolism and is closely related to diabetes due to its role in the secretion of two hormones. On the one hand the insulin, which is secreted when there is excess glucose in the blood and helps the cells to incorporate it, so that it does not accumulate. And, on the other hand, the glucagon. This has the opposite effect, as it is responsible for increasing blood glucose levels when it is scarce.
The study authors saw that fruit bats have more insulin and glucagon-producing cells. In addition, they have more regulatory sequences that stimulate these cells to release these hormones and respond to too much or too little glucose. The result of all this is that they always keep it in a perfect balance, which would be ideal for patients with diabetes.
What happens to the kidneys?
In the case of the kidneys, their function is to filter waste that accumulates in the blood and maintain a balance between levels of water and salt.
By eating so much fruit, these bats don’t just accumulate glucose. They will also have very liquid blood due to excess water from their diet. For this reason, they have a balance of cells that allows them to take advantage of the little salt that they receive with their diet and eliminate more water than other species.
The first experiments for the treatment have been carried out with mice. Photo by Sandy Millar on Unsplash
How does all this help people with diabetes?
Fruit bats could never have diabetes, as they are gifted at maximizing the use of glucose. Therefore, once the sequences of its genome that are related to this capacity have been detected, these scientists have taken a first step towards development of treatments.
They cannot start directly with humans, so they have made a first step with mice. For it, They have edited the DNA of rodents, eliminating their DNA regulatory sequences associated with the pancreas, and replacing them with those of fruit bats. If they can get them to take advantage of glucose like these flying mammals do, it would be a great step.
But it is not the only one they have left to give. They also want to perform the same procedure with other bat organs that are involved in glucose metabolism in one way or another. For example, the liver and small intestine. That would make them further refine the strategy, which, again, would first be tested in mice. They are very far from finding a treatment for diabetes in humans, but little by little they are finding which pieces they should touch. It’s a good place to start.
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