Most people don't destroy their car's engine just to save energy, and that's one luxury certain insects have that humans don't.
Potato beetles have been found to be able to break down and grow muscles on demand, which will allow them to keep their energy up.
A study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows that Colorado potato beetles break down their own flight muscles in the winter to prepare them for the harsh winter climate.
The powerhouses of the cell are known as the mitochondria. In astronauts that spend a long time in zero gravity, exercise is required to help regrowth of their muscles.
Unlike humans, the beetles spontaneously rebuild their muscles in the spring.
In the winter, many animals try to save energy and reduce their metabolism by turning down their mitochondria, according to the study. It seemed like a simple experiment to show that the low metabolic rates we measure in these beetles were related to a change in the way the mitochondria function.
When she measured the metabolism of the mitochondria in the lab, she didn't find anything.
"I don't think there's anything," said Lebenzon, a researcher at the University of California, Berkeley. After using an electron microscope to look at the muscle cells, I found that almost all of the mitochondria had vanished. Absolutely gone.
Mitophagy is a process that happens when mitochondria disappear in disease. Exercise in humans can reverse this.
When Sinclair and Lebenzon looked at the beetles at the end of winter, they found that all of the mitochondria were still there.
The ability to simply regrow an entire muscle's worth of mitochondria is completely novel, and explains how beetles are able to save energy all winter, yet be ready to fly and mate in the spring.
The discovery has immediate implications for understanding how mitochondria are regulated in insects and how researchers might be able to manipulate that regulation in the context of some muscular diseases.
Unless you have a way to regrowth your car engine, you probably can't take an energy-saving lead from beetles.
More information: Jacqueline E. Lebenzon et al, Reversible mitophagy drives metabolic suppression in diapausing beetles, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2022). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2201089119 Journal information: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
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