Name: Shawndalee Brooks

Title: Blood-Gene Reveals Reduced Circadian Rhythmicity in Individuals Resistant to

Sleep Deprivation.
Introduction: Sleep deprivation is very common among individuals today. Most adults
on average get less than seven hours of sleep a night. This can cause all sort of problems
not only in behavior but also leads to severe changes in gene expression. This study was
to observe two different types of people who are sleep deprived, people who are both
sensitive to sleep loss, compared to those who are sleep resistant. It is believed that the
effects of sleep loss will affect each individual differently. The effects of sleep loss
impact the diurnal rhythmicity in gene expression within each individual. This was the
main focus throughout the study, along with behavior changes, cognitive changes as well
as physical effects.

Reason for Research: The reason for this study was to compare sleep deprivation among
people, and to see whether it could change gene expression in blood cells when an
individual is resistant to sleep or sensitive sleep deprivation.

Methods and Materials: Participants were taken from a group of 200 people. Two types
of people were selected to be studied, sleep resistant people and people who are sleep
deprived. The total amount of people observed during this time was fourteen people, five
males and nine females. How this study worked was by controlling the hours of sleep a
person could have a night for two weeks. In other words keep a subject up and awake for
so many hours, and than controlled how much sleep each type of person was to receive.

One group would receive more sleep than the other. Each group reacts differently
depending on which group each person was in, sleep deprived or sleep resistant. Blood
sampling was done ever four hours for every subject. The purpose of this throughout the
study was to see if how the loss of sleep would affect both groups and see if it has an
effect on gene expression. The participants on average were sleep deprived for 38 hours,
than had 10 hours for recovery sleep. This would be considered the control in the study.
Results: The results of the two-week study revealed that despite the different ethnicities
and genders, there was no significant difference in results among the fourteen subjects.
Both resistant and sensitive subjects increased in number of performance lapses. Both
groups experienced the same type of mood, behavior and exhaustion. The only change
that was seen during this two week period was that biological functional categories were
significantly enriched among genes during the day. Overall the gene expression between
the two groups did not change drastically.
Discussion: Things that were seen and studied were the differences in diurnal rhythm in
the blood and how each type of persons genes were either affected or not affected. Two
genes that were found to be altered during the study while being sleep deprived was
SREBFI and CPTIA. Both of those genes have to do with lipid metabolism and lipid
synthesis, therefore this study goes to prove that between the two groups, given the same
scenario would have almost the same outcome.
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