Those who survive with little sleep without suffering them also do it thanks to the genes. Here is another mutation that helps the brain to work well anyway.
There are those who feel on the carpet if they do not sleep at least eight hours a night, and those who get well without too many shocks sleeping with 4-6 hours. The second group belong to a few lucky ones who do not seem to suffer the physical and cognitive effects of sleep deprivation and who are – as already demonstrated by past studies – helped by the genes. It has now been discovered A new genetic mutation which could contribute to the low need to sleep. Knowing this and other alterations that regulate night rest will help to treat the most common and disabling sleep disorders.
An extra gear. “Our bodies continue to work when we go to bed,” explains Ying-Hui Fu, neuroscientist and geneticist of the University of California in San Francisco and co-author of the study published on Pnas. Sleep is thought to help cleaning the brain from toxins, and the body to repair cell damage. “In these people, all these activities that our bodies perform while we sleep, simply work on a higher level”.
Favorable changes. Already in the 2000s, the Fu team had discovered a rare mutation in a gene in a gene in a gene that helps to regulate the circadian rhythms, the internal watch of the body that follows 24-hour cycles and that regulates the sleep-wake rhythms among other things. This mutation contributes to the limited need for sleep.
The study allowed the scientist and colleagues to get in touch with hundreds of people who normally arose rested even after 4 hours of night rest. By studying these people, over time, the research group has identified in total five mutations against four genes which help to work well even with little sleep.
Between one nervous cell and another. In the new study, conducted on a seventy person of course, of course not very in need of night sleep, the researchers found a mutation that did not know on a gene called Sik3which codes an active enzyme in the space between one neuron and another. That the gene in question is connected with sleep, in one way or another, was already known. In the past, a Japanese group had identified a different mutation, always borne by Sik3, which made mice particularly sleepy.
Alarm clock, armchairs! When the new mutation has been transferred to mice, which on average need 12 hours of sleep, rodents have “satisfied” themselves 31 minutes on average less sleep per day.
The changed enzyme would also seem particularly active in cerebral synapses, the connection points between the neurons. A hypothesis is that the need for sleep fails supporting brain homeostasis – By simplifying a lot, the sleeping ability to reset the brain and prepare it to the next day, also weakening the synapses that are not so significant and that have accumulated in the daytime.
What is the use of sleeping? The one uncovered is a small dowel of the complex puzzle of the need for sleep. The fact that the mutation affects, but not in such a significant way in terms of timeon the needs of rest of the mice, it suggests that the knowledge on the genes that regulate this aspect is still incomplete. Knowing better the mutations that support “always awake” subjects, immune to too short nights, will help to better understand the function of sleep, and its regulation.
