Wednesday, November 2, 2011

Python Heart Enlarged While Eating

Python can not only be stretched to accommodate the new prey is swallowed whole, intact. Reptile's heart was enlarged when digesting food. A number of researchers are now studying these animals as clues about the health of the human heart.

Python enlarged heart is like the heart of Olympic-class athlete whose size is much larger than normal heart. "His heart is not swollen, they build the heart muscle," said Leslie Leinwand, a molecular biologist at the University of Colorado Boulder.

Reptile experts have long studied the digestive process peculiar to the python, especially a large Burmese python, which bear not eating for a year.
A large Burmese python. (Picture from: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/)
Their organs can grow quickly to reach the size needed to digest food. His heart grew 40 percent or more in just three days.

After eating the food, stuffed pythons blood vessels by triglycerides, cholesterol is thick. In humans, this fat substrate will accumulate in heart muscle. While pythons do not experience this.

This adaptation is attracting the interest of researchers. They assess the python fat burning techniques can be used for humans.

In humans, the growth of the heart muscle can mean two things: the body of the healthy or the presence of disease. Athletes have an enlarged heart and other body muscles with increasing exercise intensity. As a result, the heart work more efficiently.

In humans who have heart attacks or high blood pressure, heart muscle so that it takes to grow into the chamber volume. As a result, the heart pumps blood and the difficulty to work harder.

Above limitations, Leinwand want to know how python can avoid the buildup of fat in the heart. This search to a fatty acid that triggers the emergence of an enzyme preventing the buildup of the substrate. *** [LIVESCIENCE | ANTON WILLIAM | KORAN TEMPO 3693]

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