Excerpt from Dec. 12, 2024, UT Southwestern News Release:
Most vertebrates undergo intestinal regeneration to repair digestion wear and tear. The best understood regeneration mechanism occurs in humans and other mammals, in which stem cells that regenerate the intestines reside in depressions in the intestinal walls called crypts.
Many large snakes that can go months between meals, including boa constrictors and pythons, undergo massive regeneration of atrophied intestines after eating. But since these reptiles don’t have intestinal crypts, their regeneration process has been unclear.
To investigate this phenomenon, researchers from Children’s Medical Center Research Institute at UT Southwestern (CRI) and colleagues assessed the activity of intestinal genes before and after Burmese pythons ate. Their findings showed an uptick in the activity of genes involved in embryonic intestinal development and wound healing. Many of these overlapped with genes that increase activity in humans who undergo gastric bypass surgery.
These results, published in PNAS, could lead to new treatments for diseases affecting the intestines, including Crohn’s, celiac disease, and cancer.
Members of CRI who contributed to this study, and work in the DeBerardnis Lab, are first author Aundrea Westfall, Ph.D., postdoctoral fellow; Trevor Tippetts, Ph.D., Ruth L. Kirschstein NRSA Postdoctoral Fellow; and Margaret Cervantes, B.S., graduate student researcher.
