By Miranda Chant, July 23, 2022 at 07:15
Western University researchers have discovered that the Colorado potato beetle has a unique ability that allows it to conserve energy during winter hibernation.
According to the team of insect physiologists, the tiny insect can break down and regrow its muscles.
The discovery was a bit of a happy accident. Scientists were trying to measure the beetle’s metabolic rate from its mitochondria, membrane-bound cell organelles that supply energy for flight and metabolism, when they determined it had none.
“We know that many animals try to conserve energy and lower their metabolic rate in the winter by shrinking their mitochondria,” said Western professor and study leader Brent Sinclair. “So it seemed like a simple experiment to show that the low metabolic rates we measured in these hibernating beetles were associated with a change in the way mitochondria work.”
Former graduate student Jackie Lebenzon was tasked with taking the measurement and at first believed the lack of mitochondria was due to equipment failure in the lab.
“We thought maybe the instrument wasn’t working, or my sampling was damaging the mitochondria, but I finally used an electron microscope to look at the muscle cells and found that almost all the mitochondria were gone. It’s completely gone.” Lebenzon said.
But when the researchers re-examined the same beetles in late winter, they found all the mitochondria were back.
“This ability to grow an entire muscle’s worth of mitochondria is completely new and explains how beetles are able to conserve energy all winter, but be ready to fly and mate immediately in the spring,” he said. said Lebenzon.
More research is needed to determine whether all overwintering insects use this energy-saving strategy. However, the discovery has immediate implications for understanding the regulation of mitochondria in insects, which could be manipulated to help treat people suffering from some muscle diseases.
The study was published in the high-impact journal PNAS.