This last winter, the 11 grizzlies at the WSU Bear Center were doing what they do best: a lot of nothing, and Washington State University researchers want to know exactly how they do that so well.
“We’re getting more and more interest from other researchers that bears might be a good model for what they’re studying,” says Charles Robbins, the wildlife biologist who first launched the bear program at WSU 36 years ago.
WSU evolutionary geneticist Joanna Kelley is currently using cell cultures taken for that study to investigate which genes are being activated in response to the ingestion of glucose before, during, and after hibernation. Her research team hopes to identify proteins that are changing the cells’ uptake of the sugar-regulating hormone, insulin. Diabetes in humans occurs when the body loses its ability to produce or respond to insulin.