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Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine, 2017
October 3 , 2017
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- Scientists Jeffrey Hall, Michael Rosbash and Michael Young won the 2017 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for their discoveries of molecular mechanisms controlling human biological clocks.
- The team’s work revealed the role of genes in setting the “circadian clock” which regulates sleep and eating patterns, hormones and body temperature. It also regulates sleep, which is critical for normal brain function.
- Their discoveries explain how plants, animals and humans adapt their biological rhythm so that it is synchronised with the Earth’s revolutions.
- Using the fruit fly as a model organism, these laureates isolated a gene that controls the daily biological rhythm, called the period gene.
- Scientists have long known that living organisms, including humans, have an internal timekeeper that helps them anticipate and adapt to the rhythm of the day.
- Circadian dysfunction has been linked to depression, bipolar disorder, cognitive function, memory formation and some neurological diseases.
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