'Western society is chronically sleep deprived': the importance of the body's clock

The 2017 Nobel prize for medicine was awarded for the discovery of how our circadian rhythms are controlled. But what light does it shed on the cycle of life?

The cycle of day and night on our planet is age-old and inescapable, so the idea of an internal body clock might not sound that radical. In science, though, asking the questions "why?" and "how?" about the most day-to-day occurrences can require the greatest leaps of ingenuity and produce the most interesting answers.

This was the case for three American biologists, Jeffrey Hall, Michael Rosbash and Michael Young, who earlier this week were awarded the Nobel in medicine or physiology, for their discovery of the master genes controlling the body's circadian rhythms.