Worms Reveal How Melatonin Works in the Brain to Promote Sleep
upstart writes in with an IRC submission:
Worms Reveal How Melatonin Works in the Brain to Promote Sleep:
Melatonin is used as a dietary supplement to promote sleep and get over jet lag, but nobody really understands how it works in the brain. Now, researchers at UConn Health show that melatonin helps worms sleep, too, and they suspect they've identified what it does in us.
[...] Melatonin binds to melatonin receptors in the brain to produce its sleep-promoting effects. Think of a receptor as a keyhole, and melatonin as the key. The two keyholes for melatonin are called MT1 and MT2 in human brain cells. But scientists didn't really know what happens when the keyhole is unlocked. Now UConn Health School of Medicine neuroscientists Zhao-Wen Wang and Bojun Chen and their colleagues have identified that process through their work with C. elegans worms, as reported in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Journal Reference:
Longgang Niu, Yan Li, Pengyu Zong, et al. Melatonin promotes sleep by activating the BK channel in C. elegans [$], Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2010928117)
Read more of this story at SoylentNews.