Mechanisms of Survival: How Hibernation Reprograms Cells to Weather Scarcity
Navn på bevillingshaver
Antoine de Morree
Titel
Associate Professor
Institution
Aarhus University
Beløb
DKK 7,000,000
År
2025
Bevillingstype
Semper Ardens: Accelerate
Hvad?
Hibernation, also known as “winter sleep”, is a well-known strategy to survive the winter. Brown bears hibernate the longest. We study wild brown bears to understand how hibernation enables them to survive for six months straight without eating, drinking, urinating, or moving. We will also look for an intrinsic clock that tells the animal it is time to hibernate or to wake up.
Hvorfor?
Evolution is nature’s tool to adapt to adversity. Such adaptations are an understudied field. This project will shed light on one of the best known, yet perhaps least understood, adaptations in all of biology. We expect to uncover new fundamental principles for how hibernation enables organs to actively adjust their function, while denying the cells in those organs the resources they need.
Hvordan?
To better understand how hibernation works, we will collect small biopsies from five organs of the same live bears in different seasons. We will study how all cell types in those biopsies change during the year and which signals in the blood tell them to change. To understand how hibernating bears stay strong, we study how their stem cells build muscle.