Science Fiction Network, December 12 (Jin Kaiyi) Recently, watching the World Cup has become a must-have activity for many people at night, but have you noticed that some people can stay up late to watch the football game continuously, and they can be full of energy after sleeping for a while, while some people stay up late to watch the football game, and they become drowsy the next day. What's going on?
Recently, scientists from the Beijing Institute of Life Sciences discovered a pathway mechanism for regulating sleep in mice, revealing the answers. Related research has been published in the recent journal " Nature ".
Sleep is common in animals, but there are huge differences in sleep time. For example, giraffes only need 2-5 hours of sleep a day, while koala takes 18-22 hours. Even among individuals of the same species, there are differences in sleep time. Some people only need to sleep for 4 hours a day, while others need to sleep for more than 8 hours a day. So far, the molecular mechanisms that regulate sleep time are not clear.
In 2016, scientists from the Japan Institute of International Integrated Sleep Medicine discovered a "sleepy" mutant in a mouse experiment, which can increase the sleep time of mice by 4-5 hours per day. Using this as a breakthrough, researchers have revealed a key molecular pathway that regulates sleep time.
In the study, scientists have established a new method for mouse sleep research, which can achieve rapid expression or knockout of genes and avoid developmental defects in mice. Therefore, it breaks through the limitations of traditional genetics, and is suitable for sleep phenotype analysis of redundant genes and essential genes.
Sleep is necessary for the survival of animals. Long-term sleep deprivation can cause death, so the key genes that regulate sleep are likely to be essential genes or redundant genes. Through a series of work by the research team, it was revealed for the first time that LKB1-SIK3-HDAC4/5-CREB is a key pathway for regulating sleep time, elucidates the molecular mechanism of sleep time regulation, and proposes the view that sleep is regulated by transcription .
The regulatory effect of the transcriptional molecular pathway found this time on sleep is conservatively present in mice, fruit fly , nematode , and may also exist in lower animals. In addition, there are also reports of human drowsiness caused by redundant gene-related mutations. In the future, this research may help us understand and solve the problems of sleep deficiencies and sleep diseases, and further promote humans to explore high-quality sleep and build a good living state.
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