鈥淢ORNING larks鈥� who get tired early in the evening and wake up in the small
hours aren鈥檛 necessarily unsociable. Their body clocks may be different to other
辫别辞辫濒别鈥檚.
Louis Pt谩cek of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at the University
of Utah studied members of a family in which this 鈥渁dvanced sleep phase鈥�
syndrome was common. He found it was due to a mutation in a gene called
hPer2. This mutation prevents the hPER2 protein from interacting with a key
enzyme, causing the clock to jump forwards. The work will appear in
Science.
hPer2 is the first human body-clock gene to be identified. The
researchers hope its discovery will lead to treatments for jet lag and
shift-work fatigue as well as inherited disorders.
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