Small drop in oxygen level could cure jet lag

• The experiment was conducted in mice and if confirmed in humans, the research could help inform how airlines moderate cabin air pressure.
• In a paper published in the journal Cell Metabolism, the researchers showed that changing the concentration of oxygen in cells by just three per cent, twice a day, will synchronise mouse cells to a circadian rhythm. 
• "It was extremely exciting to see that even small changes in oxygen levels were sufficient to efficiently reset the circadian clock," said lead study author Gad Asher, a senior scientist at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel.
• The researchers suspected that the protein HIF1? was the link between oxygen and the circadian clock because HIF1-alpha plays both a role in oxygen homeostasis in cells. They found that cells with low HIF1-alpha levels would not synchronise in response to oxygen variations.
• The researchers further explored oxygen's effect on circadian rhythms with jetlag experiments. 
• Just like humans, mice are prone to jetlag after a sudden shift in daylight hours. 
• Mice were first left to eat, sleep and run on their wheels in air-controlled environments.
• Altering oxygen levels alone did not change their circadian rhythms but once mice experienced a six-hour jump ahead in daylight hours, varying oxygen levels could help them adapt their eating, sleeping and running habits to the new time faster. 
• They also saw that a small drop in oxygen levels 12 hours before the six-hour daylight shift, or two hours afterwards, put the mice back on their circadian schedules faster and this too was dependent on HIF1-alpha levels.

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