Why do some people not stay up late to watch football?

Recently, watching the World Cup has become a must-do activity for many people at night, but have you noticed that some people can stay up all night to watch the games and feel energetic after just a short nap, while others stay up all night to watch the games and feel groggy and unable to work the next day. What's going on?

Recently, scientists from the Beijing Institute of Life Sciences discovered a pathway mechanism that regulates sleep in mice, revealing the answer. The relevant research has been published in the recent journal Nature.

Sleep is common in animals, but there are huge differences in sleep duration. For example, giraffes only need 2-5 hours of sleep a day, while koalas need 18-22 hours. Even among individuals of the same species, there are differences in sleep duration. Some only need 4 hours of sleep a day, while others need more than 8 hours a day. So far, the molecular mechanism that regulates sleep duration is still unclear.

In 2016, scientists from the International Institute of Comprehensive Sleep Medicine in Japan discovered a "sleepy" mutant in a mouse experiment that allowed the mice to sleep 4-5 hours more a day. Using this as a breakthrough, the researchers revealed a key molecular pathway that regulates sleep time.

In the study, scientists established a new method for studying mouse sleep, which can achieve rapid expression or knockout of genes and avoid developmental defects in mice, thus breaking through the limitations of traditional genetics and being suitable for sleep phenotype analysis of redundant genes and essential genes.

Sleep is essential for animal survival, and long-term sleep deprivation can be lethal, so the key genes that regulate sleep are likely to be essential genes or redundant genes. Through a series of work by the research team, it was revealed for the first time that LKB1-SIK3-HDAC4/5-CREB is a key pathway for regulating sleep time, the molecular mechanism of sleep time regulation was clarified, and the view that sleep is regulated by transcription was proposed.

The regulation of sleep by the transcriptional molecular pathway discovered this time is conservatively present in mice, fruit flies, and nematodes, and may also exist in lower animals. In addition, there are reports of human sleepiness caused by redundant gene-related mutations. In the future, this research may help us understand and solve the problems of sleep defects and sleep disorders, and further promote human exploration of high-quality sleep and the construction of a good living state. (Jin Kaiyi)