Probing sleep’s drowsy mystery
It is one of the ironies of sleep research that scientists stay up all night to do it. Across Harvard’s Schools and hospitals, approximately 100 faculty members, fellows, technicians, and students study sleep, with some regularly burning the midnight oil, chugging coffee, drawing blood, and blearily staring at polysomnograph readouts, seeking insights into a phenomenon so familiar that we all do it daily but so unknown that none of us really understands why. “It’s one of the big remaining mysteries in biology,” said Alexander Schier, professor of molecular and cellular biology, who is using laboratory zebrafish to probe the genetic basis of sleep. “We don’t know why we sleep, what it is good for, and why we spend a third of our lives asleep.” Even as we adjust our clocks and sleep this weekend, researchers across Harvard are taking a variety of approaches in their investigations, examining the practice of sleep through studies...