It all started with the discovery in the fruit fly (Drosophila melanogaster) of a gene (period) that encodes a protein (PER) that accumulates during the night and is degraded during the day.
He continued with the discovery of a second clock gene, timelessand culminated with the complete description of the molecular mechanisms that control the Cardiac rhtyms that allow the adaptation of living beings to their environment.
Its about called internal clock with which plants and animals – including humans – synchronize their biological rhythm with the rotation of the Earth. The scientists who unraveled this circadian machinery Michael Rosbash, Jeffrey Hall and Michael Young received the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 2017.
The environment in which human beings operate is undergoing profound transformations due to climate change. Rosbash, who has just visited Spain within the framework of the global initiative Nobel Prize Inspiration Initiative and with the help of the AstraZeneca Foundation, commented in an interview with Diario Médico that It is very possible that these changes exert some influence. However, he notes, “circadian rhythms are fairly invariable or insensitive to temperature; are constituted in a different way”.
Hence, “paradoxically, they could be the physiological piece least affected by climate change.” The oscillations between lightness and darkness do influence the internal clock, but it must be taken into account that light “is not going to change too much due to climate change.”