Bats’ Unique Blood Sugar Levels and Survival
Researchers have shown that some bats can survive and even thrive at blood sugar levels that would kill a person, despite having the highest blood sugar levels of any creature ever seen.
They also mentioned that these bats might offer information on maintaining and treating diabetes. Co-lead investigator Jasmin Camacho, a postdoctoral research associate with the Stowers Institute for Medical Research in Kansas City, Missouri, stated, “Our study reports blood sugar levels that are the highest we have ever seen in nature — what would be lethal, coma-inducing levels for mammals, but not for bats.” “We are observing a new characteristic that we were unaware existed.”
Researchers fed carbohydrates linked with a diet of either insects, fruits, or nectar to nearly 200 wild-caught bats across 29 species in order to evaluate their blood sugar levels for the study, which was published Aug. 28 in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution.
The body uses, stores, and assimilates sugar in a variety of ways. We also observed how these processes have been specialized as a result of dietary variations, according to co-lead scientist Andrea Bernal-Rivera, a former Stowers Institute researcher.
Study Findings on Dietary Adaptations in Bats
According to the researchers, these findings show that bats have evolved survival strategies based on the food sources available to them in their environment. The Neotropical leaf-nosed bat lived only on insects thirty million years ago. By altering their diet, those bats have since developed into numerous distinct species, according to researchers.
According to research, certain leaf-nosed bat species have evolved unique adaptations to help them regulate their blood sugar levels dependent on their diets, which include fruits, nectar, meat, and even blood.
In an institute news release, Camacho stated, “Fruit bats have honed their insulin-signaling pathway to lower blood sugar.” Nectar bats, on the other hand, exhibit a tolerance for elevated blood glucose levels that is comparable to those of individuals with uncontrolled diabetes. They appear to have developed an independent mechanism independent of insulin.
According to studies, bats that consumed a lot of sugar seem to have developed longer intestines and more surface-aread intestinal cells. They are able to better absorb nutrients from meals as a result. Additionally, a gene involved in blood sugar transfer in nectar bats is always active, a feature that has previously been seen in hummingbirds, according to researchers.
Implications for Human Metabolic Diseases
Professor of bioengineering and genetics at the University of California, San Francisco Nadav Ahituv said that the new study “provides not only metabolic characteristics of various bat species with different diets, but also their intestinal morphology, and candidate genomic regions and protein structural differences that could be driving dietary adaptations.”
People who are battling diabetes and other illnesses may be affected by all of this. According to Ahituv, the new information “may advance the development of novel therapeutics for a variety of metabolic diseases in humans.”
