New research showed that the internal circadian clock is influenced not by the brain only, as previously thought, but by the liver as well. Collaboration between scientists from the University of Queensland’s Institute for Molecular Bioscience in Australia and Université Paris Cité/CNRS in France has discovered that by transplanting human liver cells in mice, the circadian…

Excerpts from our conversation with Dr. Kenneth Wright, Jr., an NIH-funded expert on sleep at the University of Colorado, Boulder. NIHNiH: What is the circadian system? And why is it disrupted by shift work, such as working the night shift? Wright: The circadian system is our biological clock. That biological clock controls the timing of a lot…