Are you having trouble getting to sleep? Do you experience insomnia but don't know the cause? A gene was found to be the link between sleep deprivation and changes in one's appetite, researchers say.
Individuals may experience lack of sleep, especially when hungry. Consequently, lack of sleep may also sometimes urge a person to overeat.
A person who does not get enough sleep can develop serious medical problems, such as diabetes, cardiovascular or metabolic diseases, and blood glucose level insensitivity.
"In humans, sleep and feeding are tightly interconnected, and pathological disturbances of either process are associated with metabolism-related disorders," said Dr. Alex Keene, the study's corresponding author from the Department of Biological Sciences at the Florida Atlantic University (FAU).
Researchers from FAU studied fruit flies because the insects' sleeping habits are the same as those of humans. Just like people, fruit flies sleep mostly at night. Their sleeping ability can be negatively disturbed by chemicals, such as caffeine and other drugs. If their sleep has been disturbed, even their memory is affected.
The findings, which are set to be published in the April issue of Current Biology, showed that a gene called translin is responsible for modulating one's sleep in response to changes in one's metabolism.
Translin is a highly conserved RNA/ DNA binding protein essential to suppressing sleep due to starvation. It acts as the "integrator" of sleep and the metabolic state.
"Despite widespread evidence for interactions between sleep loss and metabolic dysfunction, little is known about the molecular basis of this interaction and how these processes integrate within the brain," Keene added.
Researchers believe that, when fruit flies are hungry, the insects will forgo sleep and instead scavenge for food.
The team created scenarios to test which would encourage fruit flies to either sleep or forage for food. The researchers examined each gene that did not affect the flies' sleep. They used RNAi screening of the nervous system to determine which gene keeps the flies awake when they are hungry.
The fruit flies were placed on a specific diet. The researchers then measured their sleep as well as their triglycerides, glycogen and free glucose levels. The starvation response was broken down into two mechanisms: sleep suppression and hunger. They found that, when neurons experienced a decrease in translin, the flies could sleep even on an empty stomach.
"While many genes have been identified as genetic regulators of sleep or metabolic state, mounting evidence from our study indicates that translin functions as a unique integrator of these processes," said co-author Kazuma Murakami, a doctorate student under the Max Planck Florida Institute Integrative Biology and Neuroscience (IBAN) program at FAU.
Photo: Dimitar Nikolov | Flickr
