Tuesday, July 14, 2015

Sleep deprivation changes visible at the genome level!


I'm not calling anybody out or anything but there are a lot of people in this field that don't seem to sleep very much.  Maybe its a bias toward the people that I know, but I feel like if I'm stuck on something at 2 or 3am I've probably got a pretty good chance of getting in touch with somebody.  Heck, maybe I've got a better chance than I do at 3pm.

This interesting study at Uppsala (described in this simple blurb here) took a look at what happens if we skip a full night's sleep and the results are pretty interesting.  After skipping just one night of sleep you can see differential regulation at the genetic level.  Not something rapid like the phospho- or kinome level, but actually genetic abundance issues.

Now there's always this question for genetic abundance changes -- does this really translate to anything at the protein abundance level?  Might be an interesting follow-up for someone (hint?).

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