Circadian rhythms，昼夜节奏（生物钟） 有理论和实践两方面的意义。理论上对生命的理解，实践上对于疾病及疾病治疗的意义。见：Sir Paul Nurse（director of the Francis Crick Institute, who shared the Nobel prize in 2001 for research on the cell cycle.）的解释：
It’s important for the basic understanding of life. Every living organism on this planet responds to the sun. All plant and also animal behaviour is determined by the light-dark cycle. We on this planet are slaves to the sun. The circadian clock is embedded in our mechanisms of working, our metabolism, it’s embedded everywhere, it’s a real core feature for understanding life.
There’s a second reason. We are increasingly becoming aware that there are implications for human disease. With the modern technological age we get more and more divorced from the circadian rhythm, as we are able to travel across time zones and disturb our circadian rhythm. We can now live in light-dark regimes that are nothing to do with the circadian rhythm. This is leading to conditions like jet lag which are disturbing and may in turn also lead to other consequences that we don’t fully understand about the human condition.
There is some evidence that treatment of disease can be influenced by circadian rhythms too. People have reported that when you have surgery or when you have a drug can actually influence things. It’s still not clear, but there will almost certainly be some implications for the treatment of disease too.
相关专题：2017年诺贝尔奖
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