研究：缺觉会影响基因
Losing sleep is bad for you because it switches on genes that damage us
I've often wondered how exactly sleep, or lack of it , can have such a devastating effect on our bodies and, guess what, how much we sleep switches good genes on and bad genes off.
我时常思考,睡眠的充足与否会对我们的身体健康带来怎样严重的后果；也不禁去猜测,多久的睡眠才会让基因发挥有益作用.
In early 2013, the Sleep Research Centre at the University of Surrey found a direct link between hours spent sleeping and genes.
2013年初,英国萨里大学的睡眠研究中心发现,睡眠时长与基因之间存在直接联系.
Every cell in our bodies carries genetic instructions in our DNA that act as a kind of operating manual. However, each cell only 'reads' the portion of this manual it needs at any given moment.
我们人体的每一个细胞中DNA所携带的遗传指令都相当于一套操作说明.然而在任何时候,细胞都只能够读取其需要的说明.
Can sleep affect how a gene reads instructions? It's a question asked by Professor Derk-Jan Dijk at the University of Surrey.
睡眠能够影响基因读取其操作说明吗？萨里大学的教授德克-简•迪克提出了这一问题.
He set up an experiment and asked his volunteers to spend a week sleeping around seven and a half hours to eight hours a night and the next sleeping six and a half to seven hours.
他着手进行了一项实验,要求志愿者们每晚睡大约七个半到八个小时,一个星期后再将睡眠时间调整为六个半到七个小时.
Blood samples were taken each week to compare which genes in blood cells were being used during the long and short nights. The results were startling.他将志愿者这两周的血液样本进行比对,观察在不同睡眠时长下,血细胞中的基因运作情况有何不同.实验结果令人大吃一惊.
