Weary Worms

Melatonin is the brain hormone that makes our eyelids droop and brings on the Zs. Some people take it in pill form to help combat jet lag or to get a good night’s sleep, but how the hormone actually induces sleep is largely a mystery. To learn more about the molecular mechanisms of melatonin researchers are studying how the hormone induces sleep in the nematode worm Caenorhabditis elegans (pictured). Yes, worms sleep too! The scientists have found that when melatonin binds to its receptor (green) on the surface of brain cells, it activates a particular potassium channel, which in turn switches off communication between the cells. Worms that lacked either the melatonin receptor or the channel had trouble sleeping. It seems, then, that brain cells, much like kids at a sleepover, need to quit yapping to get to sleep. And, melatonin, much like a strict parent, enforces that silence.

Written by Ruth Williams

Ruth Williams

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Ruth is a freelance science journalist based in the US. She's a regular correspondent for The Scientist, and her work has appeared in The Lancet, Nature, Scientific American Mind, BBC Focus and elsewhere. Twitter @rooph

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• Image from work by Longgang Niu and colleagues
• Department of Neuroscience, University of Connecticut School of Medicine, Farmington, CT, USA
• Image copyright held by the original authors
• Research published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS), October 2020