Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Sleep all comes down to the mitochondria

science.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 325 posts

Re: Sleep all comes down to the mitochondria

#121

Post by meindnoch »

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.

[citation needed]

Re: Sleep all comes down to the mitochondria

#122

Post by meindnoch »

FrustratedMonky wrote: post #38

How far away are we from making this a pill? So we can stay up 18 hours a day, or something. Any estimates. Any idea what foods or current methods, to trigger the same mechanism?

>So we can stay up 18 hours a day, or something

That's called having a kid.

Re: Sleep all comes down to the mitochondria

#123

Post by 4b11b4 »

otoburb wrote: post #85
jjk166 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Maybe not 'exclusively' slept, but koalas[1] sleep for a majority of the day (16-20 hours) in order to digest highly toxic eucalyptus leaves which constitute the main portion of their diet. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koala

Maybe I should really lean into that nap after eating..

Re: Sleep all comes down to the mitochondria

#124

Post by maerF0x0 »

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…

I will admit I'm mostly ignorant on these subjects, but just using rational/logic

> 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.

But wouldn't remaining conscious and aware be the optimal state? So you don't get eaten by predators or attacked by other humans etc? It seems to me your sentence points to an ultra low energy but conscious state, not one in which you're very vulnerable...

But maybe the vulnerability is just too little, maybe cooperative tribal/family type arrangements covered this sufficiently to not be selected?

Re: Sleep all comes down to the mitochondria

#125

Post by xgkickt »

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\

Rebalancing the weights.

Re: Sleep all comes down to the mitochondria

#126

Post by the__alchemist »

niemandhier wrote: post #55

"electrons flow through the respiratory chains of the respective feedback controllers like sand in the hourglass that determines when balance must be restored" Wow, that is my new favorite sentence from any paper ever, replacing Mark Thomas' equally epic: "What it begins to suggest is that we’re looking at a Lord of the Rings-type world" from the legendary meeting at the Royal Society in London 2012/13. https://www.n…

Perhaps sand won't save you this time, but this sand will save you time.

Re: Sleep all comes down to the mitochondria

#127

Post by boringg »

Isn't mitochondria the hot new topic du jour (last couple of years) for bio? Is this kind of peak hype cycle?

Science follows the exact same cycle as tech ... I feel like the microbiome was huge and going to solve all our problems 8 years ago.

I don't want to sound jaded but history repeats itself in echoes - and these cycles seem somewhat predictable if the specific technology isn't predictable.

Re: Sleep all comes down to the mitochondria

#128

Post by profstasiak »

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…

would kinda explain why people on keto commonly report needing less sleep - as keto is one of the best way to improve mitochondria functioning in the body

Re: Sleep all comes down to the mitochondria

#129

Post by booleandilemma »

hackyhacky wrote: post #40
alphazard wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

the interesting mystery is the mechanism of that dependency, not its evolutionary advantage.

Nah, I'd say the evolutionary advantage is the more interesting mystery. The mechanism is just an implementation detail, after all.

And by the way, if we tamper with something without understanding its purpose we risk messing something up.

Re: Sleep all comes down to the mitochondria

#130

Post by steve1977 »

kbrkbr wrote: post #5
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. 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 might have one evolutionary root cause and then got hijacked for other uses as well.
Post reply on HN