Large muscle mass doesn't equate to better performance. You can inject the mice with it to make their heart muscle increase in size, but it won't go through the conditioning the python does during ...

Pythons can eat up to quarter of their body weight, or 40 pounds, in one meal. It turns out those huge meals make their hearts stronger and may offer insight into how to treat heart disease in humans.

Cardiac fibrosis is a condition where the heart tissue stiffens. Generally, Leinwand said, stiff hearts are sick hearts. Henry Valle-Ayala works with proteins on Sept. 5 to collect information to ...