Abstract
Hibernation is a widespread metabolic strategy among mammals for surviving periods of food scarcity. During hibernation, animals naturally alternate between metabolically depressed torpor bouts and energetically expensive arousals without ill effects. As a result, hibernators are promising models for investigating mechanisms that buffer against cellular stress, including telomere protection and restoration. In non-hibernators, telomeres, the protective structural ends of chromosomes, shorten with age and metabolic stress. In temperate hibernators, however, telomere shortening and elongation can occur in response to changing environmental conditions and associated metabolic state. We investigate telomere dynamics in a tropical hibernating primate, the fat-tailed dwarf lemur (Cheirogaleus medius). In captivity, these lemurs can hibernate when maintained under cold temperatures (11–15 °C) with limited food provisioning. We study telomere dynamics in eight fat-tailed dwarf lemurs at the Duke Lemur Center, USA, from samples collected before, during, and after the hibernation season and assayed via qPCR. Contrary to our predictions, we found that telomeres were maintained or even lengthened during hibernation, but shortened immediately thereafter. During hibernation, telomere lengthening was negatively correlated with time in euthermia. Although preliminary in scope, our findings suggest that there may be a preemptive, compensatory mechanism to maintain telomere integrity in dwarf lemurs during hibernation. Nevertheless, telomere shortening immediately afterward may broadly result in similar outcomes across seasons. Future studies could profitably investigate the mechanisms that offset telomere shortening within and outside of the hibernation season and whether those mechanisms are modulated by energy surplus or crises.
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Data availability
The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
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Acknowledgements
We thank DLC research, veterinary and husbandry staff for assistance during the sampling. We thank Dr. Aric Prather for his support. This is Duke Lemur Center publication #1582.
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M.B.B was supported by the Duke Lemur Center. Additional support from Grant K08HL112961 to Dr. Aric Prather.
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MBB: conceptualization, funding acquisition; formal analysis, sample collection, writing—original draft; DLS, LJ: methodology, formal analysis, review and editing; LKG: formal analysis, visualization, writing—original draft; ADY, EEE: supervision, review and editing; PHK: conceptualization, review and editing. All authors gave final approval for publication.
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Research protocols used in this study were approved by the Duke Lemur Center Research Committee and by Duke University Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee, under protocols A263-17-12 and A213-20-11. These protocols followed guidelines established by the Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals of the National Institutes of Health.
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Blanco, M.B., Smith, D.L., Greene, L.K. et al. Telomere dynamics during hibernation in a tropical primate. J Comp Physiol B (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00360-024-01541-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00360-024-01541-9