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Weekend lie-ins could be beneficial for our health, according to a study published in the Journal of Sleep Research. Not getting enough sleep could increase our risk of death, but lie-ins could counter the effect of short sleeps during the week, and the ‘catch up’ sleep could reduce the risk of early mortality.

First author Torbjörn Åkerstedt, Stress Research Institute, Stockholm University and Karolinska Institute, and colleagues found that those under the age of 65 sleeping five hours or less seven days a week had a 65% higher mortality rate than those getting six or seven hours sleep a day. However, there was no increased risk for those who only manage an average five hours sleep during the week but slept for eight or more hours on the weekends.

This study based on data from more than 38, 000 adults highlights the importance of sleep duration for longevity and the relationship between our sleep patterns and our body clock. Considering this, we share our top three articles on sleep and circadian rhythms, and our usual top three articles for the month and our Hidden Jewels. Click on the images for full access to the recommendations.

F1000Prime is a literature recommendation service. The service has a peer-nominated global Faculty of more than 8,000 of the world’s leading biomedical scientists and clinicians who select those articles they think are particularly interesting and important, and write recommendations explaining their selection. From the numerical ratings awarded, we have created a unique system for quantifying the importance of individual articles.

Top 3 article recommendations about circadian rhythms

“I found this article interesting because it provides a novel link among the circadian clock, aldosterone and hypertension. In particular, the enzyme type VI 3beta-hydroxyl-steroid dehydrogenase (Hsd3b6) was found to be responsible for hyperaldosteronism and salt-sensitive hypertension in a mouse model lacking components of the circadian clock. These studies need to be extended to humans and may be particularly relevant in subjects with altered circadian rhythm, e.g. shift workers.” – Rhian Touyz, University of Glasgow, UK

“Sleep has a crucial function in ensuring metabolic homeostasis and the clearance of toxins like β-amyloid from the brain. In this study, using real-time assessments of tetramethylammonium diffusion and two-photon imaging in live mice, Xie and colleagues showed that deep sleep is associated with a 60% increase in the interstitial space, resulting in a striking increase in convective exchange of cerebrospinal fluid with interstitial fluid.” – Annette Karmiloff-Smith, Birkbeck University of London, UK

“Don’t you just love it when dogma suddenly has to become less dogmatic? For almost fifteen years the circadian clock of mammals has been modelled as a feedback loop, driven by periodic ‘clock gene’ expression. This paper shows that human red blood cells (RBCs), which lack transcriptional functions, exhibit very nice circadian cycles when held in culture. The startling conclusion is that clock genes are not necessary to make human cells ‘tick’.” – Michael Hastings, MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, UK

Current Top 3 recommendations

Rankings are generated using the article recommended in F1000Prime during the preceding 30 days.

“This is an excellent technical advance article that describes a novel method (Trim-Away) for depleting endogenous proteins. The protein down regulation is one of the important aspects in its functional characterisation. Most of the methods currently available for targeted disruption of a protein interfere with its gene expression at the RNA or DNA level.” – Venkateswarlu Kanamarlapudi, Swansea University Medical School, UK

“In addition to extensive alternative mRNA splicing, higher organisms now also appear to use alternative promoter (transcription start site) selection as a general mechanism to expand their coding capacity and dynamically alter their proteome.” – Filip Rolland, University of Leuven, Belgium

“This paper by Hahn et al. will be of great interest to those wanting to understand how proton transfer across cell membranes drives the synthesis of ATP, which is an essential function for life. The integral membrane complex ATP synthase has been fascinating, as it drives this fundamental biochemical process using mechanical motion in the form of the F₀ domain rotating relative to the F₁ domain.” – James P Allen, Arizona State University, US

Hidden Jewels

Hidden Jewels rankings only include articles published in specialist journals, recommended in F1000Prime during the preceding 30 days.

In this opinion article, Khan and colleagues make the long overdue case for format-free first submissions of manuscripts to peer-reviewed scientific journals. Their estimated number of taxpayer-financed hours wasted by scientists on reformatting rejected manuscripts is daunting and, unfortunately, most likely realistic.- Olivier Pertz and Jakobus Van Unen, University of Bern, Switzerland

“This manuscript is of particular interest because it unveils that hemodynamic forces govern the extravasation of cancer cells circulating in the blood stream.” – Guido Serini and Donatella Valdembri, Candiolo Cancer Institute, Italy

“This commentary by Bruno Lemaitre is a well-documented, very nice piece on the psychology of science. We find it funny and tragic at the same time. The author observes that top academic positions are held by high-ego individuals. Lemaitre elaborates on how these individuals reach their leading position, what this implies for their fellow scientists and how narcissism and need for power have shaped the scientific community in the past, and are still shaping it today.” – Maurizio Molinari and Ilaria Fregno, Institute for Research in Biomedicine, Switzerland