SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
And now we consider pythons. It is usually best to keep our distance from these sometimes deadly creatures, but a group of researchers say these snakes may hold secrets that could help us live longer and better. Here is (imitating snake) s-s-science reporter Ari Daniel.
ARI DANIEL: It's a sunny, picture-perfect day in Boulder, Colorado. The Flatirons, those iconic slabs of sandstone, pitch upwards in the distance. I'm outside on the campus of the University of Colorado Boulder with molecular biologist Skip Maas, who's holding a large shoebox.
There are holes punched in it, suggesting something's inside.
SKIP MAAS: Oh, certainly. There's a special surprise.
DANIEL: Maas opens the box to reveal Agrippina, a gorgeous, mottled ball python 4 1/2 feet long. This is Maas' pet.
MAAS: She is the current oldest member of my household.
DANIEL: When Maas adopted Agrippina, she hadn't eaten in 14 months. But at last, she did gorge on a rat, and her body, like other pythons, ramped up its metabolism dramatically...
MAAS: To help break down that meal and extract all of its nutrients.
DANIEL: In some pythons, feeding can boost their metabolic rate by some 40 times, says one of Maas' labmates, molecular biologist Jack Gugel.
JACK GUGEL: The equivalent of, like, a Kentucky Derby racehorse at rest compared to when they're sprinting around the track.
DANIEL: To handle such super-high metabolism, the python's body undergoes a dramatic renovation in just days.
GUGEL: Their organs will actually grow.
DANIEL: Including the heart, to be able to pump more blood and oxygen to digest the meal. Now, human hearts can increase in size too, over years. When that growth is due to high blood pressure or a heart attack, the heart stays enlarged and it stiffens, which can be fatal. But in a python, a month or so after a feed, the heart returns to its previous size.
GUGEL: And we were really interested in figuring out, OK, what are the signals that tell this heart to get bigger and then also to go back down to a normal size?
DANIEL: Because answering such questions might yield clues for stopping or even reversing problematic heart growth in people. The project's still underway. Now, this whole approach of translating the unique biology of pythons into medical treatments, it's the brainchild of Leslie Leinwand.
LESLIE LEINWAND: They do call me the snake lady, which I'm not sure I like.
DANIEL: Her official job is geneticist at CU Boulder.
LEINWAND: It makes a lot of sense when you think about it that pythons, because they live in such extreme environments, would have secrets that would apply to humans.
DANIEL: Secrets like how they appear resistant to muscle atrophy. Take Agrippina, Skip Maas' pet python.
MAAS: She likes you.
DANIEL: She's looking at me. She's fully extended, licking my sweater.
MAAS: (Laughter).
DANIEL: Even after months of not eating and barely moving, Agrippina's still a taut coil of spring-loaded muscle.
MAAS: When we gave her the rat, she was able to strike. But then also, she was strong enough to then constrict it completely.
LEINWAND: I know of no other creature that can do this kind of fasting without losing muscle function.
DANIEL: Leslie Leinwand says this ability could one day lead to treatments for people dealing with muscle atrophy as they age. And she says the snake's digestive processes have something to teach us as well, pointing to the countless molecules produced as the animal breaks down a meal.
LEINWAND: And I think that this could be what we call a gold mine.
DANIEL: Indeed, the researchers found a molecule coursing through the blood of both Burmese and ball pythons that surged a thousand times after feeding. Jack Gugel says it appears to act as an appetite suppressant by targeting the hypothalamus in the brain.
GUGEL: When we give this molecule to obese mice, they eat less and they lose weight.
DANIEL: Suggesting to Gugel that it could be a strong candidate for a new weight loss drug. To that end, he, Leinwand and others have formed a company called Arkana Therapeutics. Tommy Martin is a co-founder.
TOMMY MARTIN: We want to broaden our interest beyond pythons and look into other species that may have been overlooked to find cures for human diseases.
DANIEL: The promising new molecule for weight loss is described in the journal Nature Metabolism.
JASMIN CAMACHO: I think it's just this creative and really rigorous study.
DANIEL: Jasmin Camacho is an evolutionary biologist at the Stowers Institute in Kansas City. She studies bats that she thinks might hold secrets for fighting diabetes, since they can consume large amounts of nectar without any apparent health problems. So Camacho applauds the python work as another way of looking in unexpected places for possible remedies.
CAMACHO: Evolution has been running, like, natural experiments for hundreds of millions of years. So by studying these adaptations, we can, you know, start to think of other ways that, you know, our bodies can work.
DANIEL: Unconventional species present their own challenges, of course, like learning how to care for them in the lab or having to figure out their complex inner workings from scratch. But the payoff, these researchers argue, is too great to ignore - potential cures for our afflictions sprinkled across the great tree of life. For NPR News, I'm Ari Daniel.
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