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Research in Focus

Senior scientist Chris Liddle worked with a team from the Salk Institute, based in California, beating other teams from around the world racing to find the core elements of the biological or circadian clock. Their findings were published in Nature on 3 May.

“This is a very exciting discovery. These receptors are core elements of the clock that we can potentially use drugs on,” said Professor Liddle.

Work can now focus on developing drugs to target the two receptors identified in this study, and provide relief for those affected by disrupted circadian rhythms.

“People with circadian disturbances tend to have a higher incidence of obesity, diabetes and related metabolic disorders. It is much more than simply a problem of disturbed sleep”.

Professor Liddle, who is a liver expert and has worked on liver genes for more than a decade with researchers at the Salk Institute, said the team had also been able to show the receptors were important in controlling the liver metabolism of fats and other genes related to diet, nutrition, digestion and energy expenditure.

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Our researchers could see damage in the eyes of children who have been drinking fizzy drinks and eating too many carbohydrates.

The world-first study found that 12-year-olds who drink one or more fizzy drinks or cordial a day had narrower arteries in the back of their eyes, which is linked to increased chance of heart disease and high blood pressure in later life.

“Children with a high consumption of soft drinks and carbohydrates had a more adverse microvascular profile compared to those who did not drink so many soft drinks or eat so many carbs,” said Dr Bamini Gopinath, lead author and senior research fellow at the Centre for Vision Research.

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