They have discovered a natural chemical that dramatically slows down the body’s biological clock, allowing it to 'catch up' with the local time.
The chemical - dubbed 'longdaysin' - paves the way for a host of new drugs to treat severe sleep disorders, jet jag and problems caused by night shifts.
In tests, American researchers used longdaysin to lengthen the biological clocks of zebrafish by more than 10 hours. Lead scientist Dr Steve Kay, of the University of California, San Diego, said: 'Theoretically, longdaysin or a compound like it could be used to correct sleep disorders such as the genetic disorder Familial Advanced Sleep syndrome, which is characterized by a clock that’s running too fast.
'A compound that makes the clock slow down or speed up can also be used to phase-shift the clock—in other words, to bump or reset the hands of the clock.
'This would help your body catch up when it is jet lagged or reset it to a normal day-night cycle when it has been thrown out of phase by shift work.'
The researchers discovered longdaysin by screening thousands of compounds with a robot. The robot tested the reaction of each chemical with human bone cancer cells kept in a laboratory.
The cancer cells had been genetically modified with a gene taken from fireflies so that they glowed when their biological clock was activated, they report in the journal PLoS Biology.
The robot tested more than 120,000 potential compounds from a chemical library, automatically singling out those found to have the biggest impact on the biological clock.
Once Dr Kay’s group had isolated longdaysin, they showed that it lengthened the biological clock of cells in mouse tissue. They now plan to test the chemical on living mice - and believe it could also work on human cells.
However, Dr Kay said their goal was not to create a new drug.
'Longdaysin is not as potent as we would like,' he adds. 'This will be a tool for research.'
Jet lag occurs when someone passes through several time zones. It leads to disturbed sleep patterns, tiredness and lethargy and is caused when the body’s natural clock - or circadian rhythm - falls out of sync with the pattern of night and day.
The biological clock works on a 24 hour cycle and is reset each day by waking, seeing sunlight and meal times. It controlled by the melatonin released in the body when it gets darker.
It affects when people feel tired, and influences their hunger, digestion, bowel habits, blood pressure and body temperature.
Symptoms can be made worse by drinking alcohol on a long haul flight, taking too much coffee or by not sleeping on a plane.
Some jet lag treatments contain melatonin to help people sleep at night. However, while some people find them useful, there is not enough evidence that they work for them to be licenced as treatments for jet lag in the UK
Source: mailonline