Indian American doctor part of the team that made breakthrough.
By Raif Karerat
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An Indian American doctor and his colleagues have discovered the biological mechanism that controls how an animal wakes up and goes to sleep.
Ravi Allada, a circadian rhythms expert at the Northwestern University, was part of the team that made the breakthrough.
“This oscillation mechanism appears to be conserved across several hundred million years of evolution. And if it’s in the mouse, it is likely in humans, too,” said Allada, professor and chair of neurobiology in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences, according to the Press Trust of India.
In their study of brain circadian neurons that govern the daily sleep-wake cycle timing in mice and fruit flies, Allada and his colleagues found high sodium channel activity in these neurons during the day activate cells and ultimately wakes an animal up as a result.
Conversely, high potassium channel activity later in the day made the neurons less active, leading animals to sleep.
Since the mechanism has two separate “pedals,” the researchers refer to it as a “bicycle mechanism.” These two pedals oscillate up and down across a period of 24 hours, governing when the creature’s body clock tells it to wake up or go to sleep.
The team believes that if they develop a fuller understanding of this bicycle mechanism, it is conceivable that in the future, people may be able to alter their body clocks to suit the context of their specific situations — a development that could aid thousands who work shift patterns outside traditional vocational hours, noted MNT.
“What is amazing is finding the same mechanism for sleep-wake cycle control in an insect and a mammal,” said lead author Matthieu Flourakis of Northwestern. “Mice are nocturnal, and flies are diurnal, or active during the day, but their sleep-wake cycles are controlled in the same way.”