Cell . . . Insomnia can cause death through the accumulation of reactive oxygen in the intestines.

Katherina as we all know, sleep is essential for survival.in the most primitive animals, there is an obvious similar sleep state. Severe sleep deprivation can cause fatal danger, but the underlying cause of death is unknown.on June 4, 2020, dragana rogulja, a professor from the Department of neurobiology, Harvard University Medical School, published an article in the journal Cell, sleep loss can cause death through accumulation of reactive oxygen specifications in the journal Cell Through sleep deprivation experiments on Drosophila and mice, it was found that sleep deprivation can lead to the accumulation of high levels of reactive oxygen species (ROS) in the intestine, and lead to oxidative stress in the intestine, which leads to the death of Drosophila.neutralization of ROS by antioxidants can alleviate the environment of oxidative stress and return the life span of Drosophila melanogaster to normal level.the first mock exam animal chose the fruit fly as a model organism because there are many similarities between Drosophila and mammals in sleep, and fruit flies need sleep to maintain normal survival.first of all, they explored whether severe sleep deprivation can cause death? By stimulating specific neurons of Drosophila melanogaster through thermogenetics, sleep suppression can be achieved.the researchers tested most of the GAL4 protein drivers targeted at such neurons and used them to express the thermally activated cation channel TRPA1.at 21 ℃, the TRPA1 channel was closed (sleep baseline); when the ambient temperature increased to 29 ℃, TRPA1 channel was opened, which stimulated the activity of neurons.when TRPA1 was expressed in the neurons labeled with Gal4 (11h05 - / 60d04 -), the sleep of Drosophila melanogaster was inhibited by 90%, and the Drosophila melanogaster with sleep inhibition would die prematurely compared with the normal sleep control group.however, when the inhibition of Drosophila melanogaster sleep was stopped on the 10th day, the surviving Drosophila melanogaster could quickly resume the normal sleep recovery cycle and survive as the normal control group.after determining the length of time required for death due to sleep deprivation, they examined various indicators of cell damage during the process.they found that reactive oxygen species (ROS), which are unstable, transient, and highly reactive, are the drivers of cell damage and lethality during sleep deprivation.endogenous ROS plays an important role in signal transduction. However, when the level of ROS exceeds the antioxidant capacity of cells, a series of cellular reactions will be triggered, resulting in serious and extensive oxidation of cells.they used DHE as a probe to detect superoxide free radicals in living tissues.DHE normally emits blue fluorescence, and when oxidized, it inserts DNA and emits red fluorescence (below).prolonged thermal activation inhibits sleep, resulting in ROS accumulation in Drosophila intestines. The accumulation of ROS is a gradual process.peaked on the 10th day of sleep deprivation. after stopping sleep inhibition, ROS level gradually decreased and returned to the level after 15 days. then, they used mechanical stimulation and some known gene deletion mutations in sleep regulation to inhibit sleep. matched with the previous results, it was confirmed that sleep deprivation was the direct cause of ROS level increase, and these sleep deficits all contributed to premature death. after screening 53 oral antioxidant supplements, 11 antioxidants helped to return to normal life span. these antioxidants can effectively remove ROS accumulated in the intestinal tract, although they do not increase sleep time, they can also effectively play a "rescue" effect. as we are familiar with, melatonin is not primarily a circadian rhythm regulator, but an effective antioxidant in the gut. experiments in mice further found that sleep deprivation caused intestinal ROS accumulation, which further led to oxidative DNA damage, resulting in intestinal cancer and severe inflammatory reaction [1]. although death due to severe sleep deprivation is not necessarily reflected in our daily sleep, this study also makes it clear that severe sleep deprivation can lead to premature death. original link: plate maker: Qijun, references 1. Everson, C.A., henchen, C.J., Szabo, A., and Hogg, n. (2014). Cell injury and repair result from sleep loss and sleep recovery in laboratory rates. Sleep (Basel) 37, 1929 – 1940