Pnas Science Sessions

How python hearts grow and shrink Science Sessions are brief conversations with cutting-edge researchers, National Academy members, and policymakers as they discuss topics relevant to today's scientific community. Learn the behind-the-scenes story of work published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), plus a broad range of scientific news about discoveries that affect the world around us. In this episode, Leslie Leinwand, of the University of Colorado in Boulder, and Claudia Crocini, of Charité – Berlin University of Medicine in Germany, describe how the hearts of constricting pythons change size after meals. In this episode, we cover: •[00:00] Introduction •[01:19] What is the natural context for cardiac hypertrophy in constricting pythons? •[02:48] What were the mechanisms involved in this process that you identified? •[05:27] What did you discover about the mechanisms of heart size regression in these snakes? •[07:24] What are the next steps in this line of research? •[08:21] Conc