Burmese python Growth Rate

The transcriptomics of Burmese python feeding have already been examined, but the authors of this study wanted do a more comprehensive and detailed analysis. To do so, they collected small intestine and mucosal samples from 2-3yr old pythons at multiple time points before, during and after feeding.
What they found wasn’t terribly surprising. You can’t expect such rapid physiological changes to occur without substantial changes in gene expression. ~2, 500 genes (out of how many? They don’t report a total number of genes) had significantly different expression levels 6hrs post-feeding compared to fasting levels, but these expression levels returned to (mostly) baseline ~10 days after feeding. Interestingly, they found that cell-growth-related genes and cell death-related genes were differentially expressed across the time points (although I would have thought that cell growth would be upregulated shortly after feeding and cell death upregulated when returning to baseline, but this wasn’t necessarily the case: see Fig. 4A).
Our analysis demonstrates that extensive and rapid shifts in gene expression accompany rapid and massive changes in intestinal form and function upon feeding in the Burmese python.Yup.
REFERENCE
Audra L. Andrew, Daren C. Card, Robert P. Ruggiero, Drew R. Schield, Richard H. Adams, David D. Pollock, Stephen M. Secor, Todd A. Castoe Physiological Genomics Published 1 May 2015 Vol. 47 no. 5, 147-157 DOI: 10.1152/physiolgenomics.
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