Rare Genetic Mutation Allows for Less Sleep Each Night.

Sleep has always been necessary for survival. We have all been told that we need 8-9 hours sleep each night to function correctly. Recently a mother and daughter have been found to have a genetic mutation on the gene DEC2 that allows them to have only about 6 hours sleep each night. Even though this mother and daughter only get approximately 6.25 hours sleep a night, they still appear to be completely healthy.

Investigations have been done on this gene using transgenic mice. A mutation of the DEC2 gene was introduced to a group of the mice and they were found to need about 1.2hours less sleep each night than the control mice. In addition when the gene was removed from the mice it had an opposite effect and they slept quite a lot more.

Regulation of sleep has always been quite a grey area in science and the discovery of this new mutation may lead to new research. An associate professor, Mehdi Tafti, at the Center for Intergrative Genomics said that "In normal sleepers, if you reduce their duration to six hours, after a few days you will see some negative impact." This has been found to be different in 5% of the general population.

Source - http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=genetic-mutation-sleep-less
Image - http://blogs.denverpost.com/avs/wp-content/photos/sleep.jpg
Anna Di Mauro 42016663