Biology Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for biology researchers, academics, and students. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
I know that turtle brains, particularly those of individual species that hibernate and burrow are particularly resilient to hypoxia and any tissue damage secondary to a hypoxic event.
What are the known molecular mechanisms behind this resiliency? Does it have to do with the ability of their blood to store/release oxygen over extended periods, or is it molecular factors in the neural tissue that protect it from insult?
There is a bunch of literature on the topic. A good starting point is probably a short description with lots of references in this thesis (page 8), not to talk about other articles, which pop up in google scholar: 1, 2.
The mechanisms are multifaceted and involve principally decrease in oxygen and ATP demands: reduced neuronal activity, lower density of ion channels (but hyper-polarization of the membranes) and so on. Concerning blood flow: "Brain blood flow was continued or increased, and oxygen and creatine phosphate (PCr) stores offered some immediate protection. As PCr declined, turtle brain became increasingly reliant upon anaerobic glycolysis."
