For many of us, waking up in the morning is the toughest part of the day. It turns out that some flies have the same problem, according to research published this past February in Nature. Neurobiologists at Northwestern University have found a gene in fruit flies with a strong influence on their sleep patterns. After they deleted the gene, flies slept in random intervals and remained less active overall. The gene probably controls the synthesis of a key protein in pacemaker neurons, which regulate the body’s clock. If a similar version of the gene is found in humans, we may gain a new understanding of circadian rhythms—and of why some of us have such a hard time getting out of bed.

This article was originally published with the title The Sleepy Gene.

3 Comments

1. 1. nccomfort 11:28 AM 7/5/11

   Can we *please* stop referring to "the [something everyone understands] gene"? This journalistic shorthand is badly misleading.

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2. 2. E-boy in reply to nccomfort 06:50 PM 7/5/11

   Well tell you what, how about you get the geneticists to stop referring to new genes by what happens when you delete them instead of what they actually do. This is more of a problem with crap procedures than bad journalism. I mean "Eyeless"? Really?! *shakes head*

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3. 3. robert schmidt in reply to E-boy 10:16 PM 7/5/11

   That's a tough one e-boy. Taking out a gene may stop the building of eyes, but that doesn't mean the gene makes eyes. Just like if I take away the beer, my friends may not help me paint my house. That doesn't mean beer paints my house. Unfortunately it is much easier to understand what doesn't work when a gene is turned off, than what does work when the gene is on. It is the problem of not being able to solve for more than one independent variable. If all the genes are working then all you have are dependent variables. If the gene is turned off you have one independent variable and the rest are dependent variables. Eventually as you rotate through the variables each one gets a chance at being the independent variable and you begin to get a better picture of what each one does. At that point, eyeless will just be a name for a gene and not expected to be the actual description of its function. Just like my name means Smith but no one truly believes that that is my occupation. Realistically, do you expect the name of a gene to tell you all there is to know about its function? What I would expect to see is both the scientific name of the gene as well as the common name mentioned in the article. That covers all the bases.

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