Inside a bright room at Harvard Medical School, a series of tubes can be seen. Inside these tubes are fruit flies, all of them deprived of sleep. Inside one tube were flies who were genetically tweaked which kept them awake all the time. On the other tube were normal flies who weren’t able to sleep because of the constant vibrations in their tube. Both groups of flies ended up dead, with the genetically tweaked flies surviving only half as long as the shaken group of flies. But why would someone dare do this, you ask? For science, of course.
We all know that we need sleep to be at our best. But profound sleep loss has more serious and immediate effects: Animals completely deprived of sleep die. Yet scientists have found it oddly hard to say exactly why sleep loss is lethal.
What does sleep do that makes it deadly to go without? Could answering that question explain why we need sleep in the first place? Under the pale light of the incubators in Dragana Rogulja’s lab at Harvard Medical School, sleepless flies have been living and dying as she pursues the answers.
Rogulja is a neuroscientist and a developmental biologist by training, but she is not convinced that the most fundamental effect of sleep deprivation starts in the brain. “It could come from anywhere,” she said, and it might not look like what most people expect.
So where does the deadliest change happen? It happens where one might not expect: in the gut.
The indigo labyrinths of the flies’ small intestines light up with fiery fuchsia in micrographs, betraying an ominous buildup of molecules that destroy DNA and cause cellular damage. The molecules appear soon after sleep deprivation starts, before any other warning signs; if the flies are allowed to sleep again, the rosy bloom fades away. Strikingly, if the flies are fed antioxidants that neutralize these molecules, it does not matter if they never sleep again. They live as long as their rested brethren.
Check out Quanta Magazine for more details about this study.
(Image Credit: JACLOU-DL/ Pixabay)
I think the labcoats are overthinking this one. Every second of every day your body is not only fighting wars against invading organisms, but also getting rid of cells and making new cells. Also consider that your body, while amazing, is actually pretty bad at storing everything you need. Which is why you have to breathe constantly. Not to mention dealing with mutations. So Obviously the body needs time for you to stop doing everything your doing, shut a few things down, and focus on cleaning/building/etc.
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