ScienceDaily (May 16, 2008) — Due to their ability to produce a potent inhibitor of protein degradation, hibernating bears do not lose muscle mass after long periods of hibernation. The team researches for the first time the physiological reasons for an effect that is well known to the scientific community – the fact that hibernating bears do not lose muscle tissue, only fat. In the experiment, the team studied the physiological response of muscle cells of laboratory rats grown with hibernating bear plasma outside the period of hibernation (from the Ursus arctos in the Aran Valley in the Pyrenees, a protected species since 1973). In 1993, the Cancer Research Group at the Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Department at the UB was the first to describe the ubiquitin-proteasome system, the proteolytic system involved in muscle mass loss in pathological situations. Hibernating bears do not lose muscle mass after long periods of hibernation due to their ability to produce a potent inhibitor of protein degradation, researchers have found. read more
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