American scientists win 2017 Nobel Medicine Prize for ‘biological clock’ research
The clock influences such biological functions as hormone levels, sleep, body temperature and metabolism
US-born scientists Jeffrey Hall, Michael Rosbash and Michael Young have won the 2017 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for their discoveries of molecular mechanisms controlling our biological clocks.
The mechanisms help explain issues such as why people travelling long distances over several time zones often suffer jet lag and they have wider implications for health such as increased risk for certain diseases.
“(The three scientists’) discoveries explain how plants, animals and humans adapt their biological rhythm so that it is synchronised with the Earth’s revolutions,” the Nobel Assembly at Sweden’s Karolinska Institute said in a statement.
The laureates used fruit flies to isolate a gene that controls the normal daily biological rhythm and showed how this gene encoded a protein that accumulates in the cell during the night and degrades during the day.
“The clock regulates critical functions such as behaviour, hormone levels, sleep, body temperature and metabolism,” the Assembly said on awarding the prize of 9 million Swedish crowns (US$1.1 million).
It is what causes jet lag – when our internal clock and external environment move out of sync when we change time zones.