The Daylight Saving Time gene
Japanese biologists have discovered the "summer gene" in human DNA
Geneticists from Japan have found a special gene in the DNA of humans and mice that helps our body "sense" the onset of summer by how the length of the day changes and switch to a more active lifestyle, according to an article published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (Myung et al., GABA-mediated repulsive coupling between circadian clock neurons in the SCN encodes seasonal time).
"Like all other animals, our body monitors the change of seasons, and sudden changes in the length of the day can cause sudden changes in mood and a number of other problems for some people. Understanding how we can "tweak" this internal clock can give us the opportunity to help people whose system is malfunctioning," says Ji–Hwan Myung from the RIKEN Institute for Brain Research in Saitama (in a press release How your brain knows it's summer - VM).
Meng and his colleagues found out how our brain determines that summer has come by observing the behavior and brain function of several mice living in cages where the length of the day varied from very long to very short.
Scientists were primarily interested in what changes would occur in the so–called suprachiasmal nucleus (SCN) - a special part of the brain that plays the role of the main "clock" of the body and where all the neurons that control the body's biorhythms are located.
Comparing the activity of nerve cells and the work of genes in them in mice in these cells, Menu and his colleagues managed to find out that the Bmal1 gene is a detector of the changing seasons, tuned to determine when summer comes.
He does it in a very peculiar way. As scientists explain, the "clock" inside our brain is divided into two parts, the neurons in which "tick" differently. Nerve cells in one half count the seconds constantly, while in the other part of the SCN, the frequency of pulse emission depends on how long the daylight lasts. This is due to the fact that the concentration of chlorine ions necessary for the formation of nerve impulses in these neurons increases with increasing and decreases with shortening of daylight.
In general, the shorter the day, the more the "sinusoids" of these halves of the brain clock will differ.
By comparing the frequency of "ticking" of these cells, our brain can determine the length of the day and assess what time of the year is now coming or coming. Such an ability, as Japanese geneticists suggest, helped our distant ancestors to take advantage of the opportunities provided by warm weather and long summer days.
Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru
30.06.2015