Could Fruit Flies Be the Cure for Jetlag?

The now famous geneticist Amita Sehgal of the University of Pennsylvania was recently studying fruit flies in her science lab when she noticed something peculiar and odd with her tiny specimens.

The small mid-aged fruit flies slept normally without problems when bathed in direct light for 24 hours a day. What was odd was that the fruit flies tossed and turned when shifted from one day and night cycle, or similar from one time zone, to another. It turns out they were suffering from something extremely close to serious jet lag. Jet lag is something many travelers experience. It doesn’t matter if you’re flying to the other side of the world or the next time zone over, jetlag can easily affect anyone.

The fruit flies, Amita Sehgal discovered, lacked a protein she's referred to as "Jet". This protein plays a significant key role in regulating their body’s sleeping clocks. With out this important protein, or less of it, and the fruit flies lose their ability to adapt to changes in the duration of light and dark. If a similar protein is at work in humans, which could in fact be very likely, it could be possible to banish jet lag altogether. Of course more research and testing must be carried out.

The idea of such a simple drug would probably be hard to resist. It would be likely that nearly any traveler could simply pop a pill to increase their light sensitivity, essentially resetting his biological clock and allowing him to adapt instantly to a new time zone with out the problems and hassles of the ever dreaded jetlag.

It is still unknown of what the drug will be composed of, but more testing will be done in the near future to get a better understanding of this new find.