What’s a cousin to the octopus, looks like a flat squid, and could point the way toward a life-saving supplement to improve heart health?
The cuttlefish has fascinated Dr. Tyson MacCormack of Mount Allison University since his days as a graduate student. While the cuttlefish doesn’t live in our waters, preferring warmer climates, it could help address one of New Brunswick’s biggest health problems: heart disease.
Research to Help Solve a New Brunswick Health Crisis
As of the latest Health of Canadians report from Statistics Canada, which draws on 2021 data, New Brunswick leads the country in the proportion of the population with heart disease. That’s not the kind of record-making a province wants to be known for.
In Dr. MacCormack’s biochemistry lab in Sackville, a team of researchers and students are discovering that the cuttlefish could put NB on the health map for a more positive reason. They’re exploring promising similarities between the way that the cuttlefish’s cardiovascular system and the human heart react to taurine, a substance found in beef and seafood.
Although research hasn’t proven definitively that taurine can prevent heart disease, scientists have started to figure out how taurine affects the heart. In humans, as in cuttlefish and fin fish native to New Brunswick, taurine regulates the fluid level of individual cells, including those in the heart. In biological terms, this balancing effect serves as a “protective pathway,” helping the heart withstand various kinds of physiological stress.
From the Fish Lab Forward
The cuttlefish, with its pancake body and a tentacled snout, looks like something left over from the age of dinosaurs. It’s hard to imagine that what goes on inside such a creature could resemble in any way the inner workings of a human being.
Yet, says Dr. MacCormack, “something that may be a very subtle response in humans may be very obvious and easy to study in a cuttlefish or fin fish model.”
Unlike humans, aquatic animals have evolved to react to severe stressors on their system, such as going without oxygen for several months or surviving extreme swings in temperature.
Cuttlefish, explains Dr. MacCormack, have “remarkably high levels of taurine in their blood,” so they’re the perfect species for studying the role taurine plays in protecting the heart.
In their latest research projects, the team at Mount Allison have been analyzing the role that taurine plays in regulating the acidity of tissues under stress. They’ve also been investigating the potential of other nutrients to prevent cells from absorbing taurine.
The results of these studies could one day help biochemists develop a supplement to promote heart health. Getting there will require a lot more research, especially technical studies to identify the specific mechanisms of taurine uptake in aquatic animals and comparing those with human mechanisms. One of the next steps could be to conduct experiments on rodents.
Dr. MacCormack is up for the challenge because he sees the benefits his discoveries could deliver:
“We’re just a small piece of the puzzle here, and we’re chipping away generating little bits of new knowledge, but it feels like that new knowledge has the potential to contribute to the environment and to clinicians and everyday New Brunswickers.”
