Researchers have identified a gene that might explain the molecular connection between mood and the biological clock that determines sleep-wake cycles, according to a study published Feb. 22 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
We all seem to know based on our own experiences—and other research has shown—that a lack of sleep can lead to irritability, depression and other mood disorders. Now a team led by Louis Ptácek of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, based in Chevy Chase, Maryland, and Ying-Hui Fu of the University of California, San Francisco, has found a possible genetic link—a faulty copy of PER3, a circadian gene.
The details of the research—involving members of a family who have something called “familial advanced sleep phase” (which makes them extreme morning people) and who also suffer from a form of depression called seasonal affective disorder, plus a host of subsequent rat studies—are a bit too complicated to explain in the space we have here. To learn more, visit www.hhmi.org/news/clock-gene-may-connect-mood-and-sleep. (It’s worth a click to learn just how researchers gauge a mouse’s mood.)
