Naked mole-rats “turn into” plants when oxygen is low!
“Deprived of oxygen, naked mole-rats can survive by metabolizing fructose just as plants do, researchers report this week in the journal Science.Understanding how the animals do this could lead to treatments for patients suffering crises of oxygen deprivation, as in heart attacks and strokes.“This is just the latest remarkable discovery about the naked mole-rat — a cold-blooded mammal that lives decades longer than other rodents, rarely gets cancer, and doesn’t feel many types of pain,” says Thomas Park, professor of biological sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago, who led an international team of researchers from UIC, the Max Delbrück Institute in Berlin and the University of Pretoria in South Africa on the study.”
I chose this article because I have had several family members suffer from strokes and heart attacks. Some of my grandparents and great grandparents have had to drastically change the way they lived their lives due to these tragic life alter events.
When the brain begins to lack oxygen it runs out of energy and starts to die, this happens in humans, lab rats, and all other mammals. Naked mole rats use another source of energy when this happens. Their brain cells begin to burn fructose as a “backup” for energy that produces energy anaerobically through a metabolic pathway that originally scientists thought only plants had.
To test this scientists placed the mole-rats in low oxygen conditions and saw that high fructose levels appeared in the blood stream. The fructose was transported by molecular fructose pumps that is found in all other mammals. The catch is it’s only found in the intestine. “The naked mole-rat has simply rearranged some basic building-blocks of metabolism to make it super-tolerant to low oxygen conditions,” said Park, who has studied the strange species for 18 years.”
Scientists believe that because the mole-rats live in unusual conditions they’ve been able to adapt to their environments. They live in burrows that have little to no ventilation with hundreds of their kind- not the best place to have a large supply of oxygen.
Once scientists can determine how the naked mole-rat “turns into” a plant when oxygen levels are depleted then progress can be made in providing research and help to patients who suffer from oxygen depleted crisis.
https://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=241777&org=NSF&from=news
“The research was supported by National Science Foundation (grant #0744979), the European Research Council (grant 294678), the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft SFB 665, and the National Institutes of Health (grants HL71626 and HL60678).”
- Austin Daines
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ReplyDeleteThis is such an interesting blog post! It's amazing how much the physiology can vary from that of a human. Has there been any research on this topic regarding any possible applications to human health care? If so, I wonder how this discovery could be used to help patients undergoing heart attack or strokes. It seems like the most damage from oxygen deprivation in CVA's especially happens between the time of onset and when the patient begins receiving treatment. I wonder if the naked mole rat could help reverse damage done by hypoxia.
ReplyDeleteHK
I find it interesting that they even found this out. I would like to know what brought about the question about the mole rats and still being able to thrive in low oxygen environments? Also if they think there is a way for a humans body to react the same way?
ReplyDeleteIt is interesting to me that it has taken this long to find this out about the naked mole rates. This is a very interesting discovery to me also. Just this last week one of my close friend's sister passed away at a very young age from a stroke. It will be a huge step in the medical field if they can discover how to move this into human. It is great that we now know how these processes work.
ReplyDeleteJosh Kofford
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