SLEEP DEPRIVATION

EPIGENETIC

Jaja Apisara Yooyuen

ID 5861004 Section 2

Sleep deprivation and Epigenetic

1 BACKGROUND
Animals also and humans need foods, water, oxygen, and sleeping to survive. Humans spend
maximum one-third of life for sleeping. Sleep is indicator of human health. There are different sleep
time recommended depending on age.

Average Sleep Needs by Age:

Age

Recommended

May be appropriate

Newborn to 3 months old

14 - 17 hrs

11 - 19 hrs

4 to 11 months old

12 - 15 hrs

10 - 18 hrs

1 to 2 years old

11 - 14 hrs

9 - 16 hrs

3 to 5 years old

10 - 13 hrs

8 - 14 hrs

6 to 13 years old

9 - 11 hrs

7 - 12 hrs

14 to 17 years old

8 - 10 hrs

7 - 11 hrs

Young adults (18 to 25 years old)

7 - 9 hrs

6 - 11 hrs

Adults (26 to 64 years old)

7 - 9 hrs

6 - 10 hrs

Older adults (65+)

7 - 8 hrs

5 - 9 hrs

Source: National Sleep Foundation

Sleep deprivation is condition of lack of or having not enough sleep. It can cause many effects on
human body. It can lead to chronic health problems. For example, it affects Central Nervous System to
not work effectively as we can see that the obvious effect is sleepiness. It also affects Human Immune
System by stopping producing protective cytokines and infection-fighting which are produced while
sleeping. Another effect is on Digestive System, sleep deprivation lowers leptin hormone levels which is
a hormone that tells the brain to know limited of eating and might develop to type 2 diabetes.
Moreover, lack of sleep can cause an effect on Cardiovascular System, Memory Problems, Impaired
Brain Activity, Cognitive Dysfunction, High Blood Pressure, Moodiness, Heart Disease, Depression, Micro
Sleep, Cold and Flu, Accident Prone, Hallucinations, etc.
There are many sign warning that you are sleep deprived. One is when you are hungry all the
times or you have gain more weight. Memorys shot or cannot remember and getting in a trouble or feel
hard to decide something also can warn that you are having sleep deprivation. Often getting sick also
shows your bad health and sleepy deprivation. You can notice from your emotion that is it over the
place or not. There are others that you can notice for checking that are you sleep deprived.
In humans and also animals, there is a core set of genes which control behaviors of those living
things. It might control nocturnal cycles, diurnal cycles, wakefulness, sleep, and others. Humans have
many genes used for being clock genes such as CRY1, CRY2, PER1, PER2, and CYC (BMAL1).
Methylation of DNA lead to epigenetic changes. The research by scientists in Germany and
Sweden shows that one night of sleep deprivation causes epigenetic methylation changes in CRY1
promoter, in PER1, and in BMAL1 which reduces gene expression (Locwin, 2016).
BMAL1 (Brain and Muscle Arnt-Like 1) is protein coding gene and one of clock gene in humans
that can be affected by sleep deprivation. It can encode Aryl hydrocarbon receptor nuclear translocatorlike protein 1. Lack of sleep, Brain and Muscle Arnt-Like 1 gene expression is reduced and also reduce
amount of Aryl hydrocarbon receptor nuclear translocator-like protein 1. Its size is 626 amino acids and
its molecular mass is 68762 Da. It can be found in hypothalamus and others.

2 QUESTION
How meditation therapy effects on BMAL1 gene and sleep?

3 HYPOTHESIS AND VARIABLE(S)

Hypothesis: If we give college female students a meditation therapy for a week, then they will have
higher Aryl hydrocarbon receptor nuclear translocator-like protein 1 levels.
Purpose: to look on the effect(s) of sleep on Aryl hydrocarbon receptor nuclear translocator-like protein
1 levels
Independent variable: Giving meditation therapy
Dependent variable: Aryl hydrocarbon receptor nuclear translocator-like protein 1 levels
Controlled variable(s): Female college students (18-23 years old), Location, Times for sleep, Times of
taking meditation therapy

4 MATERIALS
1. 100 female college students (18-23 years old)

2. Foods

3. Rooms

4. Affinity chromatography column

5. Salt solution - Immunoblotting

6. Tris-glycine gel - Immunoblotting

5 METHOD
1. Divide female students into 2 groups (each group has 50 students)

2. Let one group have sleep deprivation (less than 4hrs) and another of sleep which is a group of
sleep find (7-9hrs)

3. Put them in separate rooms, giving them foods

4. After one week, let all student get a test their ARNTL 1 protein levels to check that is amount of
ARNTL 1 protein directly proportional to amount of sleep time by Protein Purification
- Collect a crude extract which contains complex mixture of all proteins in the cell
from their hypothalamus
- Affinity: In chromatography column, let beads are cross linked with ligands binding
to ARNTL 1 protein
- Immunoblotting (protein visualization): Use antibodies for ARNTL 1 protein as
ligands on the affinity chromatography column.

Then, rinse the column by salt solution to make target protein on the column is
removed.

Let protein is separated

5. Let a group of 50 students who have less Aryl hydrocarbon receptor nuclear translocator-like
protein 1 to get a meditation therapy for a week

6. Test amount of ARNTL 1 protein of students in a group again by same process as before
7. Record results on table
8. Analyze and conclude

Example data table:

Student 1
Student 2
Student 3
Student 4

Sleep times (hrs)

-

Amount of ARNTL 1 protein

-

6 CONTROL
The experiment will focus on a group of 100 female college students between 18-23 years old in the
same university. The reason why I designed focusing on this group of people is to determine scope of
the experiment to make it narrow as much as I can. I decided to do the experiment on a group of people
who are studying in the university because I thought that university students or college students have
much chance to get stress and during their ages they might cannot manage their time as well as adults. I
thought that there are much chances for students to have sleep deprivation.

7 IMPLICATIONS
First, we test amount of the protein to check that is amount of it is following to amount of sleep time or
not.
If the result shows that amount of ARNTL 1 protein in people who already taken a meditation is more
than amount of ARNTL 1 protein in people who have not taken a meditation, then the meditation is
work. We can conclude that meditation therapy affects on BMAL1 gene by increasing BMAL1 gene
working or sleep.
This experiment will help concluding that is meditation therapy can treat epigenetic caused by sleep
deprivation or not. If it works then we will have the way to fix sleep deprivation. We can use this therapy
to treat many people who have problem with it. The pattern of this experiment might can be used in the
future to find another way for treating such as change the method to use another therapy instead of
meditation therapy. This report was created for the purpose of aiming or finding the most useful way to
fix a problem of sleep deprivation causing on human genes.

8 REFERENCES
ARNTL. (n.d.). Retrieved from wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARNTL
ARNTL Gene(Protein Coding). (n.d.). Retrieved from genecards: http://www.genecards.org/cgibin/carddisp.pl?gene=ARNTL
Cotter, J. D. (2014). Thinking Matters . The Epigenetic and Physiological, 7.
Locwin, B. (2016, August 12). Epigenetic Zs: Could a bad nights sleep alter your genes? Retrieved from
Genetic Literacy Project: https://www.geneticliteracyproject.org/2016/08/12/epigenetic-zscould-a-bad-nights-sleep-alter-your-genes/
Phillips, T. (2016, October 13). Methods for Protein Purification. Retrieved from the balance:
https://www.thebalance.com/methods-for-protein-purification-375683