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Sleep all comes down to the mitochondria

science.org

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Re: Sleep all comes down to the mitochondria

#31

Post by bsenftner »

A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #2

So the ancient mystery of why we need sleep might have just been answered. The paper shows that cell‑autonomous mild uncoupling in Drosophila sleep‑inducing neurons -- via Ucp4A/Ucp4C -- keeps the flies awake by lowering mitochondrial Δp and therefore electron leak. This suggests a biochemical rationale for sleep -- which is postponed by the uncoupler. That form of pharmacological manipulation is also a very local in…

I'm curious how the few famous people that do not sleep at all, what's going on in their biochemestry? I don't mean celebrities, there are a few people who became famous because they do not sleep. They hold 2 complete careers, one during the day and one at night to keep from getting bored.

Re: Sleep all comes down to the mitochondria

#33

Post by alphazard »

A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #2

So the ancient mystery of why we need sleep might have just been answered. The paper shows that cell‑autonomous mild uncoupling in Drosophila sleep‑inducing neurons -- via Ucp4A/Ucp4C -- keeps the flies awake by lowering mitochondrial Δp and therefore electron leak. This suggests a biochemical rationale for sleep -- which is postponed by the uncoupler. That form of pharmacological manipulation is also a very local in…

> So the ancient mystery of why we need sleep might have just been answered.

There are layers to this, some of which are definitely not ancient mysteries. We sleep because the environment has a day-night cycle. If any task an organism must perform is better done during the day, then evolution has a very clear gradient towards only doing that thing during the day. That leads to doing other things at night, since it would be comparatively advantageous to do them at night, given whatever task is most benefited from being done during the day.

If there wasn't a day-night cycle it's unlikely that the brain would have evolved to crucially depend on approximately a night's worth of time of not using the body.

Re: Sleep all comes down to the mitochondria

#36

Post by ck2 »

mitochondria are just so incredibly fascinating in every aspect

they are like another lifeform not just living in our lifeform but making it possible

even their mere existence might be alien or even explain the lack of alien life detected so far

PBS Space Time has yet another awesome episode on that

https://www.pbs.org/video/is-there-a-simple-solution-to-the-...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abvzkSJEhKk

Re: Sleep all comes down to the mitochondria

#37

Post by FrustratedMonky »

alphazard wrote: post #33
A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #2

So the ancient mystery of why we need sleep might have just been answered. The paper shows that cell‑autonomous mild uncoupling in Drosophila sleep‑inducing neurons -- via Ucp4A/Ucp4C -- keeps the flies awake by lowering mitochondrial Δp and therefore electron leak. This suggests a biochemical rationale for sleep -- which is postponed by the uncoupler. That form of pharmacological manipulation is also a very local in…

> So the ancient mystery of why we need sleep might have just been answered. There are layers to this, some of which are definitely not ancient mysteries. We sleep because the environment has a day-night cycle. If any task an organism must perform is better done during the day, then evolution has a very clear gradient towards only doing that thing during the day. That leads to doing other things at night, since it wo…

Not sure anybody is disagreeing with this. Yes, evolution, day night cycles.

The point of this is finding the 'mechanism' which evolution came up, and now we can manipulate it to fit the modern world and stay up at night.

Re: Sleep all comes down to the mitochondria

#40

Post by hackyhacky »

alphazard wrote: post #33
A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #2

So the ancient mystery of why we need sleep might have just been answered. The paper shows that cell‑autonomous mild uncoupling in Drosophila sleep‑inducing neurons -- via Ucp4A/Ucp4C -- keeps the flies awake by lowering mitochondrial Δp and therefore electron leak. This suggests a biochemical rationale for sleep -- which is postponed by the uncoupler. That form of pharmacological manipulation is also a very local in…

> So the ancient mystery of why we need sleep might have just been answered. There are layers to this, some of which are definitely not ancient mysteries. We sleep because the environment has a day-night cycle. If any task an organism must perform is better done during the day, then evolution has a very clear gradient towards only doing that thing during the day. That leads to doing other things at night, since it wo…

What you say is true and fairly obvious, but the interesting mystery is the mechanism of that dependency, not its evolutionary advantage.

Knowing the mechanism opens the door to medical interventions. Analogously, no one is confused as to why the human body stores fat and gets hungry, but knowing the mechanism allows weight-loss treatment like Ozempic.

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