"Sleepless" Mutation Found Responsible for Sleeplessness

Though you might take mild offense at being compared to a fly, a new scientific discovery may provide a clue as to why humans and animals alike experience insomnia. A new genetic mutation found in flies can cause 80% less sleep than normal flies, forcing the flies to get by with much less sleep.

The mutation, now dubbed Sleepless, suggests that at our most basic level, sleep is caused by a slowdown in certain neurons. And according to Amita Seghal, a neurobiologist at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, who led the new study, an inability to control these neurons may be the cause of restless nights.

"When you're having a bad night of insomnia you do have the need to sleep, but you're not able to," she says. "That might be what’s going on with these animals."

Though a normal fly manages to sleep for around 12 hours a day, those flies with a broken Sleepless only get one or two hours; however they don’t realize they’ve lose sleep. "When you deprive them, you're not really taking away any sleep, because there wasn’t any to begin with," Sehgal says. However as a result, their lifespan shortens and their coordination is impaired.

Another side effect of the Sleepless mutation occurred when the flies were knocked out with ether. When knocked out by the drug, the flies legs began to twitch reflexively, an effect similar to that of another gene mutation that influences sleep patterns by regulating cell communication.

From this, Sehgal hypothesizes that Sleepless controls a brain cell slow-down that she believes may be the very essence of sleep. Thus, if Sleepless isn’t working properly, neural activity goes banana’s, which then causes the twitching legs. This may very well link to the common problem many of us face, known as restless legs syndrome, or for those of us not in a laboratory, jumpy legs.

Posted by Josh Hill.

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn14350&print=true

Comments

[Justin Woods]

LOL, My Cat is usually responsible for my sleeplessness.

JT
www.FireMe.To/udi

[Vivid Unicorn]

I am pretty sure people can't sleep because they are worried about global warming.

[Kimberly Rodney]

This makes sense to me: I've suffered from both insomnia and RLS for years, and the one thing almost guaranteed to bring on twitching legs is medication that causes drowsiness.
Looks like it's time to become the world's worst X-Man.

[times]

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[Papawhale]

I have sleep apnea but the damn $2,000 machine (or rather the mask I have to wear) they gave me to "cure" this disease is so annoying that I rip it off in frustration. *sigh*

[Lori]

That answers everything... I'm mutating! I thought I was just unable to sleep due to the problems of the world and too much caffein.

[Kathy McKinney]

I have the exact same thing: RLS and horrid insomnia. Very, very weird. I always knew I was a mutant of some sort, this explains it.

[Lel Ugo]

When you tell yourself to sleep you cant. you sleep when u least expect it, then you're breathing and heart slows.

[ed shapiro]

Insomnia can be such a tricky issue for many of us to deal with. I have developed a method for treating insomnia which deals with counting and breathing. I wrote an interesting article about it here:

http://hubpages.com/_sbmk/hub/A-New-Cure-For-Insomnia