Andersen Johnnie B, Rourke Bryan C, Caiozzo Vincent J, Bennett Albert F, Hicks James W
Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of California, Irvine, California 92697, USA.
Nature. 2005 Mar 3;434(7029):37-8. doi: 10.1038/434037a.
Oxygen consumption by carnivorous reptiles increases enormously after they have eaten a large meal in order to meet metabolic demands, and this places an extra load on the cardiovascular system. Here we show that there is an extraordinarily rapid 40% increase in ventricular muscle mass in Burmese pythons (Python molurus) a mere 48 hours after feeding, which results from increased gene expression of muscle-contractile proteins. As this fully reversible hypertrophy occurs naturally, it could provide a useful model for investigating the mechanisms that lead to cardiac growth in other animals.
肉食性爬行动物在饱餐一顿后，为了满足代谢需求，耗氧量会大幅增加，这给心血管系统带来了额外负担。我们在此表明，缅甸蟒（Python molurus）在进食仅48小时后，心室肌肉质量就会异常迅速地增加40%，这是肌肉收缩蛋白基因表达增加所致。由于这种完全可逆的肥大是自然发生的，它可以为研究其他动物心脏生长的机制提供一个有用的模型。
