Washington, May 4 (ANI): A researcher at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis has tried to identify a human gene that is more active after sleep deprivation by studying fruit flies.

For years, Paul Shaw, PhD, has used what he learns in fruit flies to look for markers of sleep loss in humans.

Shaw reverses the process in a new paper, taking what he finds in humans back to the flies and gaining new insight into humans as a result - identification of a human gene that is more active after sleep deprivation.

"I'm calling the approach cross-translational research," Shaw, associate professor of neurobiology said.

"Normally we go from model to human, but there's no reason why we can't take our studies from human to model and back again," he said.

Shaw and his colleagues plan to use the information they are gaining to create a panel of tests for sleep loss.

The tests may one day help assess a person's risk of falling asleep at the wheel of a car or in other dangerous contexts.

Scientists have known for years that sleep disorders and disruption raise blood serum levels of interleukin 6, an inflammatory immune compound.

Shaw showed that this change is also detectable in saliva samples from sleep-deprived rats and humans.

Based on this link, Shaw tested the activity of other immune proteins in humans to see if any changed after sleep loss.

Read more here:
Gene that becomes more active after sleep deprivation identified

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