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 These help explain how people experience jet lag when their internal
circadian rhythms get out of sync, while also having wider
implications for disorders ranging from insomnia to depression to
heart disease.
Chronobiology, or the study of biological clocks, is now a growing
field of research thanks to the pioneering work of the three
scientists, who explained the role of specific genes in keeping
fruit flies in step with light and darkness.
Today, scientists are exploring new treatments based on such
circadian cycles, including establishing the best times to take
medicines, and there is an increased focus on the importance of
healthy sleeping patterns.
"This ability to prepare for the regular daily fluctuations is
crucial for all life forms," Thomas Perlmann, secretary of the
Karolinska Institute Nobel Committee, told reporters.
"This year's Nobel prize laureates have been studying this
fundamental problem and solved the mystery of how an inner clock in
our bodies can anticipate daily fluctuations between night and day
to optimize our behavior and physiology."
Rosbash said the news that the trio had won the Nobel prize, which
is worth 9 million Swedish crowns ($1.1 million), was "a little
overwhelming".
"It took my breath away, literally. I was woken up out of deep sleep
and it was shocking," he told Reuters.
"It's great for basic science. It hasn't had a tremendous amount of
practical impact yet, so it's really a very basic discovery ... It's
good to have the attention on this kind of basic work."
Hall, most recently of the University of Maine, collaborated with
Rosbash while they both were at Brandeis University in Waltham,
Massachusetts. They split the prize with Young of Rockefeller
University in New York City.
Scientists were already pondering the concept of body clock genes in
the 1960s and 1970s.
Then, in the mid-1980s, the three laureates used fruit flies to
isolate a gene called period that controls the normal daily
biological rhythm and showed how it encodes a protein called PER
that accumulates in cells during the night and degrades during the
day. Further research revealed the role of other genes in the
complex system.
"We were hopeful what we did in the fly would pertain more widely,"
Young said in news briefing at Rockefeller University on Monday, but
added that "it has unfolded in a way that just couldn't be imagined
at the beginning."
Young said the trio could not have anticipated that the whole system
could be revealed in their lifetimes, but new scientific tools
helped accelerate the work.
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"Just like puzzle pieces, the genes fell out and the way they work
together provided this beautiful mechanism that we now appreciate."
Their discoveries help explain how plants, animals and humans adapt
their biological rhythm to be in synch with the Earth's revolutions.
"Before you've got the genes, everything is a black box," Michael
Hastings of the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge,
England, told Reuters: "Once you've got the genes, everything is
possible."
Scientists now understand that body clocks influence alertness,
hunger, metabolism, fertility, mood and other physiological
conditions. And researchers have begun to study the implications of
erratic sleeping and working patterns or children who stay up late.
"We are learning more and more what impact it has to not follow your
clock," Nobel committee member Christer Hoog told Reuters. "If you
constantly disobey your clock, what will happen? Medical research is
going on with regards to that."
Medicine is the first of the Nobel Prizes awarded each year. The
prizes for achievements in science, literature and peace were
created in accordance with the will of dynamite inventor and
businessman Alfred Nobel and have been awarded since 1901.
Nobel medicine laureates have included scientific greats such as
Alexander Fleming, the discoverer of penicillin, and Karl
Landsteiner, whose identification of separate blood types opened the
way to carrying out safe transfusions.
The prize has not been without controversy, especially with the
benefit of hindsight, such as the 1948 award for the discovery of
DDT, a chemical that helped battle epidemics but was later banned
due to its harmful environmental impact.
(For Nobel Prize winner graphic, click http://tmsnrt.rs/2y6ATVW)
(Additional reporting by Julie Steenhuysen, Scott Malone, Anna
Ringstrom, Simon Johnson, Daniel Dickson, Helena Soderpalm and
Johannes Hellstrom; Editing by Gareth Jones and Andrea Ricci)
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