AVIAN GLYCATION RESISTANCE: PHYLOGENETIC AND ECOLOGICAL ROOTS, MECHANISMS AND INDIVIDUAL FITNESS LINKS. – AGEs

Exploring biodiversity generally brings unexpected observations. One of them is that evolution has led to a large diversity of animal longevities with paradoxical physiological responses to environmental constraints. Birds’ glycemia is diabetic-like and it does not match with their long healthy lifespan, except if they acquired compensatory mechanisms. A first phylogenetic step of the AGEs program will explore if resilience to chronic hyperglycemia has evolved with specific life-history traits and environments among bird orders. Second, using a multidisciplinary (functional ecology, omics) approach, we will assess (i) the link between glycation and lifetime fitness in natura and (ii) the individual ageing trajectory of captive birds experimentally exposed to a diet enriched in glucose and/or methylglyoxal; (iv) a last task will be devoted to an omics' exploration of anti-glycation mechanisms in birds' samples. In relation with bird’s life history traits, assessment of AGEs will determine how birds respond to chronic hyperglycemia without apparent glycation-related adverse effects.The AGEs project beneficiates from recent technological advances and preliminary results that underline suprising bird's charateristics. A proteomic measurement of zebra finch hemoglobin showed the lack of glycated forms despite high glucose levels in zebra finches, and an in vitro exposure to glucose highlighted the capacity of zebra finch's hemoglobin to resist to glycation. Our recently acquired capacity to measure glycation levels in a large number of species, and to conduct deep mechnaistic approaches actually make the AGEs project a promising program to unravel an example of how evoltion provided a class of vertebrates with the ability to adapt to specific diet and flying capacity.
The AGEs project was recently supported by the CNRS International call with the Univeristy of Toronto, being granted with a PhD position (2022-2025).