[Paleopsych] The Times: Sleep Mutation

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Not much of a crop today, which is just as well, as I have a big MS to 
read.

Sleep Mutation

[No URL provided. I am not sure this is The Times of London (but it's probable) 
or the date or that the article is entitled "Sleep Mutation."]

A GENE that could explain why some people can get by on just a few hours'
sleep each night has been discovered by US researchers.

A small mutation in a gene known as the Shaker - also nicknamed the
"Thatcher gene" after the former British prime minister who famously needed
little sleep - allows fruitflies to thrive on a fraction of the sleep they
usually require, according to researchers at the University of Wisconsin
Medical School.

The Shaker gene controls the flow of potassium into cells, which affects
their electrical activity. Several other studies have shown that a similar
process affects human sleep: in mammals, potassium channels in nerve cells
are important to the generation of "slow waves" that occur in the brain
during deep sleep.

"Humans have the same kind of genes and potassium channels and we know that
slow waves must be generated by changes in the excitability of neuron cell
membranes," said Chiara Cirelli, who led the research.

Naomi Rogers, a sleep expert and senior research fellow at the Woolcock
Institute of Medical Research in Sydney said researchers had suspected for
some time that individual genes might determine how much sleep people need.

"Often it's been in families that you see these sort of traits where people
need little sleep, so it's not surprising that there's a gene or a group of
genes that is responsible for this," she said.

The study found that a particular mutation in the Shaker gene led
Drosophila fruitflies to sleep for a third as long as usual, without
impairing performance. Dr Rogers said less than 10 per cent of the
population were "short-sleepers" - people who could exist on three or four
hours of sleep a night.

"People are working longer hours or shift work, they have family
commitments, a lot of businesses are global 24 hours a day, seven days a
week, so we're getting less sleep," she said.

"The military, for example, is quite interested in looking at this."