Skip Maas holds his personal pet snakes, Gaius and Agrippina. In the lab, Maas studies python metabolism to better understand how the snakes can eat so much, and go so long without eating, while remaining healthy. Credit: Patrick Campbell/CU Boulder
Researchers have discovered an appetite-suppressing compound in python blood that allows snakes to consume large meals and then go months without eating, yet remain healthy. The research could inform new weight loss therapies in humans that promote satiety without the side effects of some existing drugs.
For the new study, published in Nature Metabolism, the researchers measured blood samples from ball pythons and Burmese pythons, fed once every 28 days, immediately after they ate a meal. The team, from the University of Colorado at Boulder, found 208 metabolites that increased significantly after the pythons ate. One molecule, called para-tyramine-O-sulfate (pTOS), soared 1,000-fold.
Additional studies showed that when the scientists gave high doses of pTOS to obese or lean mice, it acted on the hypothalamus, prompting weight loss without causing gastrointestinal problems, muscle loss or declines in energy.
The study also found that pTOS, which is produced by the snake’s gut bacteria, is not present in mice naturally. It is present in human urine at low levels and does increase somewhat after a meal. But because most research is done in mice or rats, pTOS has been overlooked previously.
In future research, the team hopes to explore how pTOS works in people and catalogue the function of the other metabolites that increase after pythons eat. Some metabolites the researchers identified in their study soar by 500 to 800%. Ultimately, the team imagines a day when chemically synthesized analogs of the rare metabolites found in pythons could be turned into therapies to help people.
But weight loss isn’t the only therapeutic goal they are eyeing. Age-related muscle loss, or sarcopenia, impacts nearly everyone to some degree as they get older, and people who have health problems that make it hard for them to exercise are hit particularly hard. To date, there are no therapies to halt or reverse sarcopenia. The snakes may offer insight into how to do that, too, the research team concluded.
Data from University of Colorado at Boulder