The immune system is a marvel that helps you fend off the common cold, viruses, and the flu. Its primary function is to keep you alive and healthy, and nearly all organisms possess an immune system. Despite its importance, it remains one of the least understood systems in the body, and there are many mysteries surrounding how it responds to specific stimuli.
Specifically, bats are a flying example of the confusion the immune system that confronts scientists. The bat's immune system can fend off ravaging viruses and bacteria, allowing them to live their full lifespan and continue spreading diseases like Ebola and rabies without succumbing to infections that are fatal to other mammals. So why is their immune system so unique, and how can we learn from it?
Evolution of Flight : Setting the Stage
In the last century, the unveiling of the immune system has prompted research on how it appears in different organisms that humans are closely related to. Notably, many disease outbreaks were being traced back to a single super spreader: bats. Many questions were raised, all related to how they appear normal but harbor these fatal diseases.
The likely reason why bats are immune to these diseases is due to their evolution of flight. Their ability to fly requires large amounts of metabolic energy. As a result, the bat's metabolic rates and body temperatures have risen 41 degrees because of their metabolic processes.
As a collateral, the bats' DNA breaks constantly because of their adaptation. If this was to happen in any other mammal, it would be catastrophic. However, bats have evolved to counter this by developing strong DNA repair pathways. Consequently, bats may have evolved improved resistance to diseases because of this adaptation.
The New Superpower: Immunity & It's Consequences
With new developments, researchers have been conducting isolating experiments to recognize how fatal diseases ( such as SARS and COVID-19) coexist with bats. The relationship between bacteria and bats makes it possible to transmit these diseases from animals to humans. This has been viewed many times in history through the outbreaks of Ebola and Rabies.
Bacteria living in bats coexist by rapidly evolving their interferon-blocking proteins, and this could be a major disaster if humans become infected. Another effect of the bats' high metabolic processes is that they usually maintain relatively high interferons, and these are responsible for kick-starting the immune system response. With this competition, bacteria have adapted to the bat's heightened immune response and slowed it down by developing interferon-blocking proteins.
In this rapid evolutionary race, if other diseases become transmitted from bats to humans, it can prove to be fatal. The Human immune system does not contain as much interferons as their bat counterparts, so the response to disease is slower. This is why research is pivotal to fully understand the bat's immunity and it's possibilities.
Unveiling the Bat's Immune system: What we can learn
The science of genetics has come a long way since the pioneering work of Rosalind Franklin and her contemporaries in the 1950s. However, many processes remain mysterious and are still being studied.
In the future, scientists hope to learn from the bat's immune system with it's significant potential for human health benefits. Through research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, scientists are working to understand how bats are indifferent towards fatal diseases. Through new studies, they hope to create new treatments against those viral diseases for humans.
Another unique trait of bats is their long lifespans and relatively low rates of cancer. As a result, institutions like the University College Dublin aim to research the cause of this phenomenon. By learning from the bat's DNA processes, researchers hope to develop new cancer treatments and improve human longevity.
These global research efforts to decode the extraordinary adaptations of bats are paving the way for exciting genetic discoveries. The bat's immune system, long a scientific puzzle, is gradually revealing its secrets. Scientists are finding answers to old questions and opening doors to new possibilities for human health and disease prevention.
https://www.mpg.de/15171579/0720-mozg-112489-the-genetic-basis-of-bats-superpowers-revealed Assessed and Endorsed by the MedReport Medical Review Board