2024-01-15 11:11:15
[News Quest = Science Reporter Kim Hyeong-geun]People like sweet things. But humans aren’t the only mammals that love sugar. Fruit bats eat up to twice their body weight in sweet, sugar-rich fruit per day.
But unlike humans, fruit bats thrive on a sugar-rich diet. They have the ability to lower blood sugar more quickly than other bats, whose main diet is insects.
So scientists are studying how fruit bats can process such sweet foods in hopes of discovering new ways to manage glucose levels in humans.
Jamaican fruit bats eat up to twice their body weight in sweet, sugar-rich fruit per day. But unlike humans, fruit bats thrive on a sugar-rich diet. They have the ability to lower blood sugar more quickly than other bats, whose main diet is insects. [사진=Shutterstock free image]
Jamaican fruit bat eats more than twice its body weight in sweet fruit every day
In other words, we set out to study the metabolic system of bat fruit, which does not cause diabetes despite consuming so much sugar. The goal is to find ways to prevent and treat diabetes in humans.
A research team of biologists and bioengineers at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) set out to determine how fruit bats evolved to specialize in a high-sugar diet.
Through this work, the research team led by UCSF professors Nadav Ahituv and Wei Gordon embarked on a quest to approach the treatment of the recently prevalent human diabetes from a different angle.
Diabetes, the 9th leading cause of death as of 2019, occurs when the body is unable to process sugar effectively, resulting in excess glucose in the blood.
Using a technique that analyzes the DNA of individual cells, the research team compared the metabolic guidelines encoded in the genome of the Jamaican fruit bat (Artibeus jamaicensis) with the genome of the insect-eating big brown bat (Eptesicus fuscus).
About 2% of the original DNA consists of genes that contain the cells’ guidelines for producing special characteristics, such as the fruit bat’s long tongue. The remaining 98% is DNA, which regulates genes and determines the presence or absence of the characteristics encoded by the genes.
In this paper published in the latest issue of the international journal Nature Communications, the research team said, “To understand how fruit bats evolved to consume so much sugar, we looked at the relationship between fruit-eating bats and insect-eating bats. “I wanted to identify differences at the genetic and cellular level,” he said.
The pancreas, which regulates insulin, and the kidneys, which dilute salt, have excellent functions.
“Specifically, we examined genes, regulatory DNA, and cell types in the pancreas and kidney, two important organs involved in metabolic diseases,” the research team said.
The pancreas secretes hormones such as insulin, which lowers blood sugar, and glucagon, which raises blood sugar, and regulates blood sugar and appetite according to the situation.
The research team confirmed that Jamaican fruit bats produce more insulin and have more glucagon-producing cells than big brown bats, which prey on insects.
They also discovered that fruit bats have regulatory DNA that regulates the proper balance of insulin and glucagon production through pancreatic cells.
Professor Way Gordon, a biologist at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), led the study. She argued that understanding the metabolic mechanisms of fruit bats might open new avenues for preventing and treating diabetes in humans. [사진=UCSF]
Therefore, by making these two hormones work properly, fruit bats can maintain a balanced blood sugar level even when consuming large amounts of sugar.
The kidneys filter metabolic waste from the blood, maintain water and salt balance, and regulate blood pressure. Fruit bat kidneys can keep the salt content in fruit low.
“We found that Jamaican fruit bats adjust the composition of their kidney cells depending on their diet, reducing the number of urine-concentrating cells, causing salts in their urine to be more diluted with water compared to big brown bats,” the research team explained.
Understanding the DNA and metabolic processes of fruit bats may open new paths to treating and preventing diabetes.
Diabetes is one of the most costly chronic diseases in the world. In the United States, in 2022, the government spent a total of $412.9 billion on direct and indirect medical costs related to diabetes. .
Most approaches to developing new treatments for diabetes are done in traditional laboratory animals, such as rats, because they are easier to breed and study.
But outside the lab, there are mammals, like fruit bats, that have actually evolved to tolerate high sugar loads.
“Finding out how these mammals deal with high sugar loads might help researchers identify new approaches to treating diabetes,” Professor Way-Gordon explained.
What the research team discovered through fruit bats may be limited to Jamaican fruit bats. There are regarding 200 species of fruit bats.
Studying more bats would help clarify which fruit bat DNA sequences are relevant to treating diabetes, the team advised.
“Our study also focused only on the pancreas and kidneys of bats,” the team said. “Analyzing other organs involved in metabolism, such as the liver and small intestine, will help us understand fruit bat metabolism more comprehensively and design appropriate treatments,” he concluded.
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