- Researchers at CU Boulder have discovered a molecule called pTOS in pythons that spikes after feeding and may help suppress appetite.
- The molecule pTOS, found in python blood after feeding, has been shown to make obese mice eat less and lose weight when administered.
- Scientists are exploring the potential of developing drugs based on pTOS and other molecules discovered in pythons to target appetite and metabolism for obesity treatment.
A team of Colorado researchers is looking to one of nature’s most unusual survival strategies for a possible obesity treatment: the python, a snake that can go months without eating and then dramatically transform its body after a single meal
What’s happening?
At CU Boulder, scientists investigating how pythons endure long periods without food while retaining muscle and quickly switching into digestion after a meal traced part of that response to a molecule called pTOS. As NPR reported, pTOS spikes in python blood after feeding and may help suppress appetite
Leslie Leinwand, executive science officer at CU Boulder’s BioFrontiers Institute, and her collaborators described the molecule in a paper published in Nature Metabolism. The researchers found that pTOS increased “a thousand times” after feeding in Burmese and ball pythons
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Jack Gugel, a CU Boulder molecular biologist and former student in Leinwand’s lab, said the molecule appears to act on the hypothalamus, a region of the brain involved in hunger. “When we give this molecule to obese mice, they eat less and they lose weight,” he said
The finding builds on years of python research. Tommy Martin, an assistant professor at the University of Nebraska Medical Center and former researcher in Leinwand’s lab, explained the scale of the animals’ post-meal changes. “Pythons ramp up their metabolism from 10 to 40 times following a feeding, depending on the size of the meal,” he said
Why does it matter?
Obesity, heart disease, and age-related muscle loss affect millions of people, and scientists are still searching for new tools beyond the treatments already on the market
A drug based on python biology remains far from pharmacy shelves, but the work points to a new way to target appetite and metabolism
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The same animals may also help researchers better understand heart repair and muscle preservation. Yuxiao Tan, described by NPR as a CU Boulder molecular biologist mentored by Leinwand, found that after eating, python heart muscle cells can actually increase in number — something human hearts struggle to do after injury
Jasmin Camacho, a Stowers Institute for Medical Research evolutionary biologist who was not part of the study, said unusual animals can be valuable to science
“Evolution’s been running natural experiments for hundreds of millions of years,” Camacho said
What’s being done?
Gugel, Leinwand, Martin, and Stanford University’s Jonathan Long started a company called Arkana Therapeutics. Their goal is to develop drugs based on pTOS and other molecules discovered in pythons and possibly other animals with unusual biology
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Scientists are still examining other parts of python biology, including the way the snakes enlarge and reduce their hearts and maintain muscle through prolonged fasts. Skip Maas, a molecular biologist at the University of Colorado Boulder, told NPR that his pet ball python went 14 months without eating and was still “strong enough to then constrict [a mouse] completely.”
Ashley Zehnder, CEO of Fauna Bio, said, “You can find these really potent bioactive molecules in these extreme species, because they were evolutionarily perfected, and we can use that for medicines.”
“It makes a lot of sense that pythons, because they live in such extreme environments, would have secrets that would apply to humans,” Leinwand said
Camacho said, “By studying these adaptations, we start to think of other ways that our bodies can work.”
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