SCIENCE IN THE NEWS DAILY
Keeping Tabs on Biological Clocks
from the San Diego Union-Tribune (Registration Required)
On Sunday, when daylight-saving time takes effect, people will spring forward to turn their alarm clocks ahead one hour. Adjustments to their biological clocks might take a bit longer.
That single hour of lost sleep and the groggy grumpiness that inevitably seems to follow show just how much humans are influenced by cycles of time. These circadian rhythms can be as obvious as night and day or as mysterious as the internal oscillations of a cell.
"The biological clock in humans plays a central role in whether we gain or lose weight, when we fall asleep and wake up, how likely we are to have accidents or how we respond to disease," said Susan Golden, a biology professor at the University of California San Diego. Scientists have discovered that biological clocks of all kinds govern the well-being and behavior of remarkably diverse forms of life, from bacteria and plants to mice and men.
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