Jim Wilson
speaker
359 appearances
7 recordings
4 series
first heard Feb 2013
last heard 25 Jun
Jim Wilson’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 6 in all, peaking in Apr 2026 with 3.
Appearances
Flies and we all expected yes some clock gene would be found, but we didn't.
We found an entirely new type of gene.
But it's easy to see why energy levels might be important for sleep.
And the key thing that made me believe it was when we went to the flies, to the Drosophila, and we knocked this fruit flies, and we knocked down this gene, they also slept for a different length of time.
They actually slept for was it um two hours shorter per night.
How
Yes, and don't ask me how long a fruit fly sleeps for either.
We collaborate with people in different fields and they assure me
Yes.
Actually one of my favorite findings of the last year's work was part of the sleep questionnaire asked how long does it take you on an average night to get to sleep?
And I myself just hit the pillow and fall asleep.
But it transpires that some people take up to two hours to fall asleep.
We found quite a strong association between a variant in this gene and it was somewhat predictive of how long people took to drop off at night.
Any idea of the function of that gene?
Well the interesting thing about it is that this gene, when we look at it in other organisms, is a light sensing.
It encodes a protein that senses light.
It's not fully worked out yet, but it's maybe shifting the body clock.
Maybe shifting that.
Yeah, it must be influencing this in some way.
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