Pythons are huge, dangerous and slithery, but their ability to increase the size of their hearts has caught the eye of researchers studying heart disease.

Hiberna Corp. of Boulder is banking on it. The biotech company has just signed an agreement with the University of Colorado to use technology developed by CU professor Leslie Leinwand.

Pythons can increase the size of their hearts by 60 percent and then then shrink them again in just days, Leinwand said.

That's intriguing for cardiologists because they know that heart size increase is good if it comes from exercise but bad if it results from high blood pressure.

The python's amazingly fast metabolism will quicken researchers' knowledge of what genes are responsible for the fluctuations in size, Leinwand said.

And that could lead to new therapies and drugs for people with heart problems.

"If we are able to understand the genetic cues involved in rapid python heart muscle increases and decreases, that to me says there is the potential to develop therapeutics for humans," Leinwand said.

Leinwand has studied hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (a thickening of the heart), which is the biggest cardiac killer of young athletes in the United States.

So far, researchers have found 20 genes associated with HCM, and they're looking for more.

CU undergraduates working with Leinwand are analyzing the Burmese python's genome for clues to explain the rapid heart muscle changes.

They suspect it has something to do with the python's ability to remain inactive for long periods of time, then eat a huge meal in one long gulp.

"Pythons can eat up to 100 percent of their body weight in one sitting," so their metabolisms need to respond in a dramatic way, Leinwand said.

Pythons also can shoot up their insulin levels by fortyfold, a change that would kill a human.

And the powerful constrictors have a special ability to lose very little muscle during periods of inactivity.

All those unusual capacities have implications for research into AIDS, cancer and aging, she said.

Leinwand's research was inspired by an article a decade ago by Pulitzer Prize-winning author and evolutionary biologist Jared Diamond on extreme adaptations by pythons.