Good night wishes might make us humans go to bed happy, but it’s a gene that determines sleep quality and allows sound sleep, scientists said on Wednesday.
In a study published in the US journal Science Advances, Jason Gerstner of the Washington State University and his colleagues demonstrated that the gene, called FABP7, plays a role in controlling the sleep quality of mice and fruit flies.
"It's the first time we've really gained insight into a particular molecular pathway's role in complex behavior across such diverse species," Gerstner said in a statement.
Gerstner first noticed the gene FABP7 when he was a doctoral student at the University of Wisconsin studying genes that change expression over the sleep-wake cycle.
He found that the expression of FABP7 changed over the day throughout the brain of mice.
Jason Gerstner, assistant research professor in WSU's Elson S. Floyd College of Medicine, is the lead author of a Science Advances paper describing a gene involved in the quality of sleep experienced by three different species, including humans. / Washington State University Photo
During the current study, Gerstner and his colleagues saw that mice with a knocked out FABP7 gene slept more fitfully compared to normal mice with the gene intact, suggesting the gene is required for normal sleep in mammals.
To see if FABP7 is indeed required for normal sleep in humans, Gerstner and his colleagues in Japan looked at the data from nearly 300 Japanese men who underwent a seven-day sleep study that included an analysis of their DNA.
It turned out that 29 of them had a variant of the gene responsible for the production of FABP7, and like the mice, they tended to sleep more fitfully.
While these people would get the same amount of sleep as other people, they would wake up more often during the night.
Gerstner found gene involved in sleep in three species: mice, fruit flies and humans. / Washington State University Photo
Next, the researchers made transgenic fruit flies by inserting mutated and normal human FABP7 genes into star-shaped glial cells called astrocytes that were previously known to perform many different support roles in the brain, including nutrient delivery and injury repair.
They found flies with the mutated FABP7 gene also woke up more often, similar to what was observed in mice and humans.
"This suggests that there's some underlying mechanism in astrocytes throughout all these species that regulates consolidated sleep," said Gerstner.
While the researchers were excited about finding a gene with an apparently strong influence on sleep, they stressed that other genes are almost certainly involved in the process.
(Source: Xinhua)
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