Interview with Sandy Martin: What We Can Learn About Hibernation From Genes

How do the brains of hibernators survive near freezing and an almost complete lack of oxygen? Sandy Martin, Fauna Bio Founding SAB member and researcher at the University of Colorado, in collaboration with Fauna Bio CSO Katherine Grabek and others, examined adaptive mechanisms in hibernator brains and also improved the quality of the 13-lined ground squirrel genome to identify >6000 genes that change expression at key hibernation timepoints. The results are published in Frontiers in Physiology and Fauna Bio CEO interviewed Dr. Martin about her work and what it means for the larger community of hibernation researchers.

KEY POINTS

• The better the genome and annotations, the better our understanding of hibernation will be.
  Phenotypes (traits) come from the expression of genes - so to understand how hibernators are protected, we have to understand changes in gene expression. And thus - can learn important lessons about how to manipulate metabolism and protect tissues from damage

• Why is this study different than prior studies?
  Gene expression linked to the better genome has much more rigorous timepoints. If timepoints are not accurate, we won’t see the important changes in gene expression

• Leveraging the power of the past to advance the future
  We can use the data from “broken” genes in humans to look for key #genes that drive hibernation that still exist in the human genome.

• What else can we do with this data? 
  We can use the RNA-seq data to help fill in unknown bases in the genome that are currently just “N” and improve the annotation of the genome