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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

#91

Post by crocowhile »

derbOac wrote: post #67

The paper is here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09261-y Not an expert in this area, but the essay feels a bit like an oversimplification. Not only is this in flies, but I wasn't entirely convinced this isn't about rest rather than sleep per se. It's a cool paper, interesting to read and read about, but my hunch is there's more steps in the chain, and am not sure it will replicate in humans or even mamma…

It is an awful paper and I am a very expert in this area. This is science, alas.

Re: Sleep all comes down to the mitochondria

#92

Post by jvanderbot »

jjk166 wrote: post #75
ddalex wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> why ancient ancestors started sleeping I tend to believe that our ancestors didn't start sleeping, they started waking up ! the default pattern is sleep and conservation of energy, but you need to wake up to expend more energy for a short period in order to feed yourself efficiently

There definitely was never a life form which exclusively slept - all the critical parts of life require being awake. Life that didn't sleep, however, is possible.

I don't think they meant "Modern" sleep. I think they meant "Only brief periods of highly energetic activity before returning to the usual activities were precursors to our modern consciousness/wakefulness"

Re: Sleep all comes down to the mitochondria

#93

Post by andrewflnr »

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…

The question isn't the timing but why it happens at all. Even at night, being unaware of one's surroundings during sleep is a huge disadvantage that requires lots of effort and adaptation to work around. It needs to produce commensurate benefits, but we're not sure what they are.

Re: Sleep all comes down to the mitochondria

#94

Post by dboreham »

bsenftner wrote: post #31
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.

They could also be liars.

Re: Sleep all comes down to the mitochondria

#95

Post by bravesoul2 »

yreg wrote: post #9
kbrkbr wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So the ancient mystery of why we need sleep might have just been answered. I would be very surprised if sleep would serve only one purpose. In complex interconnected systems you usually don't get far with monocausal explanations.

It would make sense if there was a monocausal explanation of why ancient ancestors started sleeping, but then other body functions started making use of the sleeping system since it was at hand.

Sounds like my microservices

Re: Sleep all comes down to the mitochondria

#96

Post by AIPedant »

lolive wrote: post #7
kbrkbr wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So the ancient mystery of why we need sleep might have just been answered. I would be very surprised if sleep would serve only one purpose. In complex interconnected systems you usually don't get far with monocausal explanations.

AI frenzy almost convinced me that sleep was the training of our neural network with all the prompts of the day. And now this /o\

You didn’t need this study to realize that this was wrong: jellyfish and hydras also sleep despite not having a central nervous system. There are indications that sponges sleep too, despite not having any neurons (though obviously it’s somewhat ambiguous): https://www.science.org/content/article/if-alive-sleeps-brai...

Re: Sleep all comes down to the mitochondria

#97

Post by layer8 »

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…

"Healthy" restorative-sleep drugs might be even more useful. Would these new insights help with that?

Re: Sleep all comes down to the mitochondria

#99

Post by flobosg »

crocowhile wrote: post #91
derbOac wrote: post #67

The paper is here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09261-y Not an expert in this area, but the essay feels a bit like an oversimplification. Not only is this in flies, but I wasn't entirely convinced this isn't about rest rather than sleep per se. It's a cool paper, interesting to read and read about, but my hunch is there's more steps in the chain, and am not sure it will replicate in humans or even mamma…

It is an awful paper and I am a very expert in this area. This is science, alas.

Not an expert, but I’d love to hear more about what makes it awful.

Re: Sleep all comes down to the mitochondria

#100

Post by 0xbadcafebee »

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…

It's good to know but the practical applications may be limited. Once we finally figured out why/how we use oxygen in the 1930s, it led to a couple applications, like anesthesia regulation and hyperbaric oxygen therapy. But there wasn't a lot you could do with it. We've probably gathered all the information about sleep that has practical applications, and a lot of it has to do with other things like hormones, sensory input, age.
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