Sloths, famously, are pretty slow. They move fewer than 38 metres a day, and sleep for up to 20 hours at a time – they’re so sluggish that fungi, moths, and algae grow on their fur, forming an entire ecosystem.
As it turns out, this lethargic lifestyle might be helpful to astronauts hoping to survive long space missions.
In fact, scientists from the Wellcome Sanger Institute in Cambridge have just published a study about how helpful the animals’ DNA might be to people heading to galaxies far, far away, as well as those with diseases like diabetes down here on Earth.
Why might sloths help people?
Study co-lead author, Dr Camila Mazzoni, said: “Sloths have the slowest metabolism [the sum of chemical processes happening in your body] of any mammal, yet they remain healthy.
“Understanding how they achieve this may reveal new insights into how cells manage energy efficiently.”
Sloths don’t need to eat much, they barely move, and they generally keep their temperature low.
Despite this, they remain healthy and manage to get all the important stuff, like finding a mate, getting food, and swimming for surprisingly long distances, done.
The study authors wanted to find out which part of the animals’ DNA enabled them to do as much as they can with very little energy input. They compared their genomes, which they described as genetic “instruction manuals”, to those of other mammals to work out why sloths were different.
After examining these genomes, that found out that sloths had several copies of ‘transposons’ or ‘jumping genes’, which, the Wellcome Sanger Institute explained, are “DNA sequences that can copy and paste themselves to change their position in the genome”.
Humans have some parts of these transposons, but they’re usually not whole, and are often inactive.
It turns out many of these relate to mitochondria, or the energy-generating parts of cells.
What’s that got to do with space, or disease?
Study co-author Dr Pedro Galante said, “Many human conditions – including diabetes, ageing-related disorders, neurodegeneration, and muscle wasting – involve problems with energy production and mitochondrial function.
“While further research is needed, sloth cell lines may offer a natural model for understanding how organisms cope with low-energy states, and what goes wrong in disease. In the long term, this could inform research into tissue preservation, critical care medicine, ageing, metabolic disease, and even long-duration space travel.”
That’s because saving energy in space, especially if you’re out there for a long time, is important. The further we travel, the more important this may be.
These genome discoveries could help us to manage diseases that involve metabolic changes, like diabetes, too.
Study author Dr Marcela Uliano-Silva added: “Evolution has already run billions of experiments. By studying unusual animals like sloths, we sometimes uncover biological solutions that humans never evolved...
“These sloth-specific genes are linked to mitochondria and metabolic pathways, suggesting they might be related to the evolution of their extremely slow metabolism.”
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