Fauna Bio Awakens Medicine to the Mysteries of Hibernation

<p>Why is hibernation something that bears and squirrels do, but humans don’t? Even more interesting, what’s going on inside a hibernating animal, on a physiological and genetic level, that allows them to survive the winter in a near-comatose state without freezing to death and without ingesting any food or water? And what can we learn about that process that might inform human medicine?</p><p>Those are the big questions being investigated right now by a four-year-old startup in California called Fauna Bio. And Harry's guests today are two of Fauna Bio’s three founding scientists: Ashley Zehnder and Linda Goodman. They explain how they got interested in hibernation as a possible model for how humans could protect themselves from disease, and how progress in comparative genomics over the last few years has made it possible to start to answer that question at the level of gene and protein interactions. The work is shedding light on a previously neglected area of animal behavior that could yield new insights for treating everything from neurodegenerative diseases to cancer.</p><p><strong>Please rate and review The Harry Glorikian Show on Apple Podcasts! </strong>Here's how to do that from an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch:</p><p><strong>1. </strong>Open the Podcasts app on your iPhone, iPad, or Mac. </p><p><strong>2. </strong>Navigate to The Harry Glorikian Show podcast. You can find it by searching for it or selecting it from your library. Just note that you'll have to go to the series page which shows all the episodes, not just the page for a single episode.</p><p><strong>3. </strong>Scroll down to find the subhead titled "Ratings & Reviews."</p><p><strong>4. </strong>Under one of the highlighted reviews, select "Write a Review."</p><p><strong>5. </strong>Next, select a star rating at the top — you have the option of choosing between one and five stars. </p><p><strong>6. </strong>Using the text box at the top, write a title for your review. Then, in the lower text box, write your review. Your review can be up to 300