Nobel prize for body clock researchers
US scientists Jeffrey Hall, Michael Rosbash and Michael Young won the 2017 Nobel prize for medicine on Monday for unravelling molecular mechanisms that control our internal body clocks.
These help explain how people experience jet lag when their internal circadian rhythms get out of sync, while also having wider implications for disorders ranging from insomnia and depression to heart disease.
Chronobiology, or the study of biological clocks, is now a growing field of research, thanks to the pioneering work of the three scientists, who explained the role of specific genes in keeping fruit flies in step with light and darkness.
Scientists are exploring new treatments based on such circadian cycles, including establishing the best times to take medicine, and there is an increased focus on healthy sleeping patterns.
“This ability to prepare for the regular daily fluctuations is crucial for all life forms,” said Thomas Perlmann, secretary of the Karolinska Institute Nobel Committee. “This year’s Nobel prize laureates have been studying this fundamental problem and solved the mystery of how an inner clock in our bodies can anticipate daily fluctuations between night and day to optimise our behaviour and physiology,” Perlmann said.
Rosbash said the news that the trio had won the Nobel prize, which is worth $1.1m, was “a little overwhelming. It took my breath away, literally. I was woken up out of deep sleep and it was shocking.”
“It’s great for basic science. It hasn’t had a tremendous amount of practical impact yet, so it’s really a very basic discovery…. It’s good to have the attention on this kind of basic work.”
Hall collaborated with Rosbash while they were at Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts. They split the prize with Young of Rockefeller University in New York City.
Scientists were already pondering the concept of body clock genes in the ’60s and ’70s. In the mid-’80s, the three laureates used fruit flies to isolate the “period gene” that controls the daily biological rhythm and showed how it encodes a protein, PER, that accumulates in cells at night and degrades during the day. Further research revealed the role of other genes in the system.
“We were hopeful what we did in the fly would pertain more widely,” Young said on Monday, but added that “it has unfolded in a way that just couldn’t be imagined at the beginning”.
Young said the trio could not have anticipated that the whole system could be revealed in their lifetimes, but new scientific tools helped to accelerate the work. “Just like puzzle pieces, the genes fell out and the way they work together provided this beautiful mechanism that we now appreciate,” he said.
THIS ABILITY TO PREPARE FOR THE REGULAR DAILY FLUCTUATIONS IS CRUCIAL FOR ALL LIFE FORMS
Their discoveries help to explain how plants, animals and humans adapt their biological rhythm to be in synch with the Earth’s revolutions.
“Before you’ve got the genes, everything is a black box,” says Michael Hastings of the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, England.
“Once you’ve got the genes, everything is possible.”
Scientists now understand that body clocks influence alertness, hunger, metabolism, fertility, mood and other physiological conditions. And researchers have begun to study the implications of erratic sleeping and working patterns on children who stay up late.
“We are learning more and more what impact it has to not follow your clock,” says Nobel committee member Christer Hoog. “If you constantly disobey your clock, what will happen? Medical research is going on with regard to that.”