2013 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

Alternation of organ function in mice of jet-lag model

Research Project

Project/Area Number	25560426
Research Category	Grant-in-Aid for Challenging Exploratory Research
Allocation Type	Single-year Grants
Research Field	Basic / Social brain science
Research Institution	Kyoto University
Principal Investigator	OKAMURA Hitoshi 京都大学, 薬学研究科(研究院), 教授 (60158813)
Project Period (FY)	2013-04-01 – 2014-03-31
Keywords	脳とリズム
Research Abstract	Timed activities such as eating and sleeping are crucial for a comfortable social life and healthy living. As the living environment changes rapidly, and the numbers of around-the-clock facilities and people staying awake all night increase the convenience of consumers and the productivity of industries, the biological system to regulate our internal rhythms is being compromised. From screening the knockout of a variety of genes expressed in the SCN, here we identified the mice which do not show jet-lag even when they exposed suddenly to the 8-hour phase advance. We identified that the local circuits of vasopressin/V1aV1b-receptors in the SCN are crucial for jet-lag formation. From the analysis of chronic jet lag conditions, we want to clarify the mechanism of a life-style related disease evoked by chronic jet-lag.