While a diet high in sugar can lead to diabetes, obesity and even cancer, fruit bats survive by eating up to twice their body weight in sugary fruit each day.
A team from the University of California set out to discover whether this “skill” could be transferred to humans with diabetes.
“For me, bats are like superheroes,” said Nadav Ahitov, director of the Human Genetics Institute at the University of California, California, and co-author of the study. “Each one of them has an amazing superpower, whether it’s echolocation, flight, or eating fruit and not getting diabetes.” .
He added: “In the case of diabetes, the human body cannot produce or detect insulin, which leads to problems controlling blood sugar, but fruit bats have a genetic system that controls blood sugar without failure. We would like to learn from this system.” To provide better treatments for diabetes.
Search mechanism
To discover how these bats ingest sugar without consequences, Ahitov's team focused on how the pancreas, which controls blood sugar, evolved.
They found that the pancreas has additional insulin-producing cells and genetic changes to help the bats process this huge amount of sugar.
They discovered that fruit bat DNA had evolved to turn on and off genes appropriate for fruit metabolism.
The researchers said that these results are only the beginning, in an attempt to benefit from this technology to protect humans from diabetes.
Symptoms of type 1 and type 2 diabetes:
- Feeling thirstier than usual.
- frequent urination.
- Losing weight unintentionally.
- Blurry vision.
- Slow wound healing.
#Diabetes. #Fruit #bats #inspire #experts #key #treatment
