A recent study conducted by Karla Allebrandt and her researchers group of the Ludwig Maximilians University, Munich has claimed that a particular set of gene in human body controls the time of sleep of individual persons. The gene is also responsible for people’s getting up from sleep in a particular time.

The gene is called ABCC9 and according to the researchers’ claim it can also control and lessen the sleeping time of a person. They have also claimed that the newly discovered gene can be proved to be useful in explaining why some people can easily live on just 4 hours of sleep out of 24 hours.

For the sake of the study researchers assigned 4000 volunteers from the EU countries to fill up a form containing questions about the details of their sleeping habits. The researchers studied the forms well as the participants’ gene structures. After series of examinations they have found that having two copies of one regular alternative of ABCC9 causes less hours of sleep than two copies of another different alternative of ABCC9 gene.

The gene was discovered a long time ago, but the recent study for the first time has discovered it in animals and in humans. Previous studies have already found the existence of ABCC9 genes in fruit flies. Fruit flies also show sleeping tendencies. In the present study researchers have successfully discovered it in Animals. They have mentioned that by blocking the function of ABCC9 sleeping duration can also be reduced. They tried it on the fruit flies and found positive result, the researchers have claimed.

The Daily Mail has found Karla Allebrandt saying that the finding can be proved useful in examining the link between sleeping, and more specifically the duration of sleeping with diseases like diabetes or cardiovascular diseases.