Do you find yourself opening your eyes every morning just for an instant before the alarm clock goes off? In 2011, a team of scientists from the Salk Institute for Biological Studies (USA) published a work in the journal Science in which they claimed that the key to this ability lies in a component of the biological clock that until then was unknown.
Every morning, the biological clock boosts our metabolism and starts important physiological functions that “tell” our body that it is time to stand up. “The body is essentially a set of watches,” said Satchindananda Panda, a co-author of the study. ” We vaguely knew the clock that makes us fall asleep every night, but not the one that activates us again at dawn, ” he explained. Now that they have found it -a protein called JARID1a-, the researcher assures that “we will be able to better understand insomnia, and why our biological clock fails as we age or when we develop certain chronic diseases.” It could also help to understand the mechanisms of cancer.
A switch that turns us on every morning
A protein called PERIOD (PER) is involved in the molecular mechanisms that control our sleep-wake cycle. The number of PER proteins in every cell in the body increases and decreases every 24 hours. Our cells use this level as an indicator of the time of day, and based on those amounts tell the body if it should be awake or asleep. In fact, when PER levels drop at night, our biological systems slow down: blood pressure drops, heartbeat slows down, our mental processes slow down … so that everything gets back on track. the next morning, Satchindananda Panda and his colleagues discovered, the enzyme JARID1a needs to intervene, which functions as a switch that “turns us on.”
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Chronic diseases
“Much of what it means to be healthy and young comes down to a good night’s sleep,” says Panda. “Now that we have identified JARID1a in the activation of our diurnal cycle, we have a new way to explore why some people’s circadian rhythms are off and perhaps find new ways to help them.” With age, for example, the biological clock seems to experience imbalances, which causes many older people to have difficulty sleeping. There is also strong evidence that shift workers, such as doctors and first responders, are at increased risk for certain diseases.
On the other hand, daily cell cycles are essential for the normal functioning of the genetic mechanisms that control how cells grow and divide, both during normal development and in cancer cases. Another chronic disease, diabetes, is also related to cellular mechanisms linked to metabolic cycles controlled by the biological clock. For example, the conversion of sugars into fat, which usually only takes place at certain times of the day, in diabetics it seems that this process takes place throughout the day, which also suggests certain clock imbalances.
