http://www.jeanlouie.com/
March 22, 2004
In one Seinfeld episode, Kramer gave the guaranty to Ellen that he would wake up at a certain time in the morning, without the need of an alarm clock; he would then wake up Ellen?s friend, a marathoner who was to participate to the New York Marathon. It did not quite happen that way...
The question that many may ask is: Is this notion a pure fabrication, and is our organism really set to wake up and go to sleep at specific times? The answer is yes. This physiological process is called our circadian rhythm (circadian is Latin for ?about the day?).
The clock activity is programmed in a pair of genes that was discovered and sequenced in plants and in hamster. Since hamster is a close genetic model for humans, it is almost sure that evolution did not delete our clock gene.
We do know that the gene works. We wake up at just about the same time no matter the time we go to bed (10:00 p.m. or 2:00 a.m.). However, experiencing hunger at lunch time, even after a voluminous late breakfast, is probably more social than biological (Pavlov reflex?).
Now, let us go back to Kramer. Would he be capable of setting his internal clock to 5:00 a.m. instead of his usual natural wake up time of 7:00 a.m.? Scientists at Northwestern University think may be. They were able to shorten the circadian rhythm of a hamster, from 24 to 20 hours, by changing a single amino acid product of genetic material. Doing the same, in a human, in a reversible way, with a pill, is the next challenge.
The philosophical upshot to these advances will be the nefarious consequence on the clock industry. How many will lose their clock-making job?
http://www.jeanlouie.com/
(OdlerRobert Jeanlouie, Monday, March 22, 2004)
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