Scientists may have found the gene responsible for sleep deprivation. While studying the sleep habits of fruit flies, which are remarkably similar to humans, scientists have found a conserved gene that works as a modulator of sleep in response to metabolic changes.
Sleep loss in humans is associated with increased appetite and insulin insensitivity. Chronically sleep-deprived individuals are more likely to develop obesity, metabolic syndrome, type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease. This means that finding out how to prevent this type of chronic sleep loss in important to helping those who suffer from it.
"In humans, sleep and feeding are tightly interconnected, and pathological disturbances of either process are associated with metabolism-related disorders," said Alex C. Keene, corresponding author and associate professor at Florida Atlantic University. "Despite the widespread evidence for interactions between sleep loss and metabolic dysfunction, little is known about the molecular basis of this interaction and how these processes integrate with the brain."
When fruit flies are hungry, they'll actually sleep less due to their quest for food. In this latest study, the researchers used fruit flies and created various scenarios between sleeping and foraging. This allowed them to test genes, one at a time, to find out which one didn't affect their sleep.
The researchers conducted a nervous system-specific RNAi screen in order to identify the genes that were required to keep hungry flies awake. In the end, they found that when translin was knocked down in neurons, starving flies slept as soundly as they would on a full stomach. The researchers also saw the same instability to suppress sleep when in starvation mood in the flies that carried a null mutation in translin.
"While many genes have been identified as genetic regulators of sleep or metabolic state, mounting evidence from our study indicates that translin functions as a unique integrator of these processes," said Kazuma Murakami, co-first author of the new study. "We also have been able to show that this gene is not required for general modulation of sleep. Furthermore, we now know that the energy stores in mutant flies are normal and that the starvation-induced sleep suppression phenotype is not due to increased nutrient storage."
The findings reveal a bit more about the science of sleep. More specifically, it shows that translin may be a huge part of it.
The findings are published in the March 2016 journal Current Biology.
