Why is the python heart twice its size?

- The fat in the blood of the bodies of the giant python mysteriously ballooned, the study showed.

Photo of a python with a mesh-like skin is swallowing the mouse.

One study found that fat works to make the heart healthy - at least for pythons.

High levels of fatty acids, or lipids, in the blood of reptiles make their hearts and other organs nearly double after fracturing durable bonds, experiments show.

In parts of the python, if food chewing is not frequent, it is often enlarged to speed up digestion after a large meal, according to studies by co-author Leslie Leinwand, a molecular biologist at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Until now it was still a scientific mystery, how to make the python body perform this strange activity, Leinwnad said.

' When we took blood from animals, we realized that whatever is the cause of that organ development, where the blood is circulating, because all organs, except the brain, There is an increase in the size of food . '

And ' when they look at the blood, it is full of milky fat - it looks like milk .'

Python blood is a great advance of science

Thoroughly studying the development of organs of pythons, Leinwand and his research team created a Burmese python colony in the laboratory - ' it is not a typical experimental animal, ' Leinwand to speak.

When Leinwand received a shipment of 20 small snakes in a pillow in 2005, she thought she might have lost her mind because of them. However, the team was stuck in tests for five years.

Early researcher Cecilia A.Riquelme soon discovered that when increasing the amount of plasma from python blood into the heart chambers of the rat, during the implantation process, the heart chambers of the rat will be larger.

' It is a great improvement, ' Leinwand said.

In a living animal body, proper development makes the heart healthier in a more comprehensive way.

The next step is to find out what causes the organs to swell. The team gradually eliminated possible causes, such as natural proteins, leaving only fatty acids.
Biologists have identified three specific lipid types in increased python blood after a meal. That's enough to make sure, when scientists inject drugs into a rat living with three fatty acids, it makes the heart of the mouse bigger.

Heart of python

The majority of ' concern about pythons is the incredible level of high levels of fatty acids in the blood, and it is not ill ,' says Leinwand, in her study published in Science.

Contrary to this, people with high fat in the blood are at a higher risk of serious cardiovascular diseases.

' Why do pythons avoid some heart disease themselves? ' she speaks. It is possible, Leinwand suggests, at a particular level of the extent to which the combination of three fatty acids interferes with heart disease.

In addition, the question is how to know exactly which fats are increasing in the organs of the python, Leinwand said. ' Up to now, it is no longer suitable for the models we know .'

In general, it is too early to argue that the research will be able to reinforce or improve the treatment of healthy hearts.

But it could bring good news: Her team is using three fatty acids with mice with heart problems to consider, if fats can prevent, slow or even reversed their condition.