Philip De Jager, neurologist with Harvard Medical School in Boston, and his colleagues may have found a link between a specific gene and a person's inherent daily wake and sleep patterns. So far, scientists could show that various genes are involved in the regulation process of these patterns. In order to understand the biological basis of the circadian rhythm better, De Jager and his team collected more than 1000 human DNA samples and took a close look at a circadian rhythm-regulating gene called PER1. The three discovered variations of the gene were associated with specific times of the day when a person was most active.
Being able to understand this process might be a first step to alter these times of most activity, especially in order to help shift workers who might have difficulties working against their intrinsic rhythms and to prevent serious health conditions resulting from it.
Scientists also found a possible connection between these variations of PER1 and a person's time of death, although it cannot be only a single cause. Health conditions, such as heart conditions, also play an important role here.
Further work in this area is still needed to examine the exact role of PER1 variations and their part in other medical conditions.
source: http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/340629/title/Gene_appears_linked_with_a_persons_daily_rhythms
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AntwortenLöschenPhilip De Jager, neurologist with Harvard Medical School in Cambridge, MA,* and his colleagues may have found a link between a specific gene and a person's inherent daily wake and sleep patterns. Until now, [W-lexis]† scientists have been able to [Gr] show that various genes are involved in the regulation process of these patterns. In order to understand the biological basis of the circadian rhythm better, De Jager and his team collected more than 1000 human DNA samples and took a close look at a circadian rhythm-regulating gene called PER1. collected more than 1000 human DNA samples and took a close look at a circadian rhythm-regulating gene called PER1. The three discovered variations of the gene were associated with specific times of the day when a person was most active.
AntwortenLöschenBeing able to understand this process might be a first step in altering [Gr,W+] these times of most activity, especially in order to help shift workers who might have difficulties working against their intrinsic rhythms and to prevent serious health conditions resulting from it.
Scientists also found a possible connection between these variations of PER1 and a person's time of death, although it cannot be only a single cause. Health conditions, such as heart conditions, also play an important role here.
Further work in this area is still needed to examine the exact role of PER1 variations and their part in other medical conditions.
* As an alumni of Boston University, which lies directly across the Charles River from Harvard and, as sent up several times in the film The Social Network, has a strained relationship with Harvard, take my word for it, although Boston and Cambridge are the two largest parts of a single metropolitan area, they are culturally rivalrous and don't take kindly to being conflated with each other.
† So far should not be used in the historic (a.k.a. narrative) present tense (HPT). That phrase is reserved for the standard present tense, where it means that some regular activity is still occasionally performed. In the HPT, Until now has the same general denotation, but can be used in the HPT to more specifically mean, "Up to the point in time when the thing I've just mentioned happened."