The human body has a so-called alarm clock gene that wakes up even if one hasn’t set the bedside alarm, U.S. researchers say.
Researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, Calif., said they identified a new component of the biological clock, a gene responsible for starting the clock from its restful state every morning.
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Luciano DiTacchio and Satchidananda Panda (Courtesy of Salk Institute for Biological Studies) |
The biological clock ramps up our metabolism early each day, initiating important physiological functions that tell our bodies that it’s time to rise and shine.
Discovery of this new gene and the mechanism by which it starts the clock everyday may help explain the genetic underpinnings of sleeplessness, aging and chronic illnesses, such as cancer and diabetes, and could eventually lead to new therapies for these illnesses.
“The body is essentially a collection of clocks,” says Satchidananda Panda, an associate professor in Salk’s Regulatory Biology Laboratory, who led the research along with Luciano DiTacchio, a post-doctoral research associate.
“We roughly knew what mechanism told the clock to wind down at night, but we didn’t know what activated us again in the morning. Now that we’ve found it, we can explore more deeply how our biological clocks malfunction as we get older and develop chronic illness.”
In a report published in the journal Science, the Salk researchers and their collaborators at McGill University and Albert Einstein College of Medicine describe how the gene KDM5A encodes a protein, JARID1a, that serves as an activation switch in the biochemical circuit that maintains our circadian rhythm.
“Now that we’ve found it, we can explore more deeply how our biological clocks malfunction as we get older and develop chronic illness. “So much of what it means to be healthy and youthful comes down to a good night’s sleep,” Panda said. (From news reports)
<한글요약>
미국의 과학자들이 신체 내에서 알람시계 역할을 하는 유전자를 발견했다.
캘리포니아 Salk Institute for Biological Studies 연구팀은 KDM5A라는 이름의 유전자가 아침에 사람의 생체 시계를 휴식 상태에서 깨어나게 하는 기능을 가지고 있다고 밝혔다.
이번 발견은 수면과 노화, 만성 질환의 유전적 근원을 밝히는데 기여할 것으로 보고 있다.
Satchindananda Panda 연구자는 “신체는 기본적으로 시계의 집합이다”라고 말했다. 이 연구결과는 Science 지에 발표되었다.
