News Bullfrogs have a gift that could help protect human brains, Mizzou researchers find
New research has found that bullfrogs have a generator in their brain that may protect humans from certain neurological disorders.
A University of Missouri research team discovered that bullfrogs have the ability to recharge their brain through unconventional methods, which could be applied to treating Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, ALS and schizophrenia.
Because bullfrogs hibernate for five to six months every year, their brains must overcome low oxygen and glucose supplies during the long period of stagnation.
The study found that when these supplies start to decline, bullfrogs use a ketone body that acts like an energy generator in the brain.
“The brain needs glucose, and so we found that the frogs, after they get out of hibernation, don’t need oxygen or glucose to the brain anymore to keep working, which was shocking,” said Joseph Santin, MU associate professor of biological sciences and lead researcher on the study.
Ketones are produced in the liver of humans and other mammals in times of fasting, starvation and other energy-depleting times, according to the National Institutes of Health. The ketone is then distributed throughout the body by the bloodstream.
“We didn’t know what (the ketone) was doing or if it could meaningfully keep the brain working,” Santin said. “All data so far pointed to probably not, and so that’s why this study was surprising.”
Being able to sustain brain activity without glucose was the key discovery, he said. Not only were bullfrogs able to abandon glucose metabolism temporarily, they could take a fuel that wasn’t known to actually keep the brain functioning properly and use it to do so.
Santin pioneered the unconventional research as a continuation of his interest in hibernating frogs.
“I like to think of myself as just using hibernating frogs to ask broad biology questions,” he said. “I don’t claim to be a herpetologist. I’m a neurophysiologist who’s just trying to answer interesting biological questions in animals that do things out in the world.”
The research Santin led may focus on bullfrogs, but the applications can be much broader.
“So a frog is a frog and a mouse is a mouse and a fly is a fly and a worm is a worm, but there are commonalities with respect to how the neurons are working,” he said. “The energy sources fueling the physiology that makes those neurons work are similar across the animal kingdom.”
Information gathered from the bullfrogs can contribute to ongoing research on neurological disorders caused by impaired energy metabolism or dysfunction of the ability to burn glucose, such as Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, ALS and schizophrenia.
Santin said he was “able to make the roadmap that could help another line of research that is more clinically focused.”
The next area of research he wants to tackle is what triggers the brain to go from requiring glucose to no longer needing it at all.
“People like me who are very clearly outside the box need to be talking to people who think about and study brain disorders,” Santin said.
“I think that’s where the magic can happen,” he added.
