Researchers at the University of California, San Francisco sequenced the family's DNA after noticing their short, apparently effortless sleep pattern ran across generations, then tested the gene they found in mice bred to carry the same change.
Ying-Hui Fu's team identified a rare mutation in ADRB1, a gene for a receptor active in neurons involved in wakefulness, that reduced the protein's stability and altered its signaling. Mice engineered to carry the same mutation slept less than normal littermates, echoing the short natural sleep reported by the human family.
The receptor turned out to be most active in a specific brain region during wakefulness and REM sleep, giving a concrete mechanism for how some people genuinely need less sleep rather than simply tolerating less of it. The mutation has so far been found in only this one family, so how common related variants are elsewhere in the population is still unknown.
Read the original study
Shi et al., Neuron, 2019 · doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2019.07.026
One gene let a family sleep less.
Source
- Shi, G., Xing, L., Wu, D., Bhattacharyya, B. J., Jones, C. R., McMahon, T., Chong, S. Y. C., Chen, J. A., Coppola, G., Geschwind, D., Krystal, A., Ptáček, L. J., & Fu, Y.-H. (2019). A Rare Mutation of β1-Adrenergic Receptor Affects Sleep/Wake Behaviors. Neuron, 103(6), 1044–1055.e7. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2019.07.026