Northwestern University and Evanston's Only Daily News Source Since 1881

The Daily Northwestern

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Northwestern University and Evanston's Only Daily News Source Since 1881

The Daily Northwestern

Northwestern University and Evanston's Only Daily News Source Since 1881

The Daily Northwestern

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Genes determine sleep cycles, Northwestern study finds

Why are some of us “morning people,” waking at dawn immediately ready for the day, while others stay up late and loathe an early morning wake up?

Northwestern researchers and other scientists say it may run in the family.

Experimenting on a sample of 4,000 fruit flies, a group of researchers from NU and the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology was able to isolate a gene responsible for regulating sleeping patterns and remove it. They published their findings Feb. 17 in the science journal Nature.

“Each of us have circadian clocks, 24-hour timers that regulate our biological processes, with the most prominent being the sleep-wake cycle,” said Ravi Allada, a professor of neurobiology and physiology and associate director for the Center for Sleep and Circadian Biology. “If you break that clock, it’s like breaking the alarm clock that normally wakes us up.”

The clock is vital to our everyday lives, said post-doctoral fellow Chunghun Lim, the principal author of the paper.

“When you travel around different time zones, you might experience a jet lag,” Lim wrote in an e-mail, explaining an individual’s internal clock and external time are in conflict. “The clock system is also closely linked to other aspects of our life including sleep, metabolism and immune system.”

Just one mutation in these clock genes would remarkably affect our sleeping and waking patterns, he said.

Allada and his colleagues, including Research Assistant Prof. Valerie Kilman, broke the clock. Testing on a sample of 4,000 fruit flies, the team was able to isolate the gene responsible for regulating sleeping patterns and remove it.

Fruit flies are ideal subjects for research because discovering genes in the fly, Allada said, often leads to the discovery of similar genes in humans. After knocking out the gene, the fruit flies lost their internal clock, sleeping and waking at all times of the day.

For humans, this explains “mutations in certain families, where they get up really early or go to bed really early,” Allada said. “It seems to be a highly inherited trait.”

Even subtle differences in sleeping behavior, like the difference between “morning people” and “late-night prowlers,” is likely explainable by variations in a similar gene in humans, he said.

This means instead of being overworked, fatigued NU students might want to blame their heredity. Jayshree Raghavan, a Weinberg sophomore, described herself as frequently being tired.

“I guess two days a week, I end up hitting the snooze button 10 times,” she said.

Matt Kuyawa, a Communication sophomore, also struggles to wake up in the morning because of his late-night sleeping habits.

“I try to go to bed around 1:30, but usually it’s around 3:00,” he said.

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Genes determine sleep cycles, Northwestern study finds