As we talked about previously, bats are amazing mammals. Like Batman, they fly and fight off many potential enemies. – albeit their enemies are typically microscopic as opposed to cartoon-like super-villains. Their remarkable resilience to cancers and various pathogens has attracted the attention of scientists and even resulted in the formation of the Bat1K Consortium aimed at sequencing the genome of various species of bats to search for clues that can explain their natural resilience.
A recent review article published in Trends in Immunology has summarized ways that studying cells from bats can help inform the discovery of new treatments that can benefit mammals, including bats and humans. For example, they described how immune-related genes in bats are more similar to humans than those found in laboratory mice. The review also highlighted several genetic adaptations that allow bats to resist viral infections and cancer. The authors argue that these recent advances and discoveries these genetic adaptations will allow them to develop genes that can produce peptides to target infections and cancers in other species.
Source
K Baid, AT Irving, N Jouvenet, A Banerjee. The translational potential of studying bat immunity. Trends in Immunology. 45(3): P188-P197, 2024.
Categories: Aging, Bird flu, Extreme Animals, Illnesses and Injuries, Nature's Solutions
Tags: bat, cancer, genomics, immune, virus
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