Mutation: DEC2 or BHLHE41
The Story
Hello common reader this is a gene in James body and I am the gene to make James get up early in the morning! Yep I’m the gene that makes it so you don’t need more then 6 hours to be up and ready to go out to the world and have fun. You common people need more sleep. No I am not the gene in your teen agers body so they can stay up an extra hour. “MOM I HAVE DEC2 SO I DONT NEED TO GO TO SLEEP”. No little Bobby that wont work this time. What Bobby didn’t know is that he had a text that next morning. Haha I laugh every time. Hey I don’t have anything’s to think about in this here body but I get around to tellingp all the other genes funny stories you know.
So you might be thinking to yourself about how stupid my back story is going but hey this is my story. Okay if I have to tell you how I work, my name is BHLHE41 and that stands for Basic Helix Loop Helix Family Member e41 (YEA ITS LONG BUT WHY NOT IT EXPLAINS ALOT) so me, this gene as the name implies, a basic loop protein in various tissues of both humans and mice as we know! (YEA I GET AROUND TO EVERYONE) I am also known as DEC2, hDEC2, and SHARP1. but you can call me DEC2 for short.
NOW my function is that the gene encodes a transcription factor that belongs to the hairy/enhancer of split subfamily of basic loop system factors. Well that’s what gene school tells you (yea we got schooling). You could just think of it as I make people sleep less but still keeping the host energised through out the day. OR IF YOU REALLY DONT GET IT: take your normal life and take off a few hours of your sleep schedule.
So through out James life it from start I made James’s parents life hell when he was younger from him ending up doing his homework at 11pm and still getting up at 6am and then staying up late doing paper work at the young age of 42. You see
Part 1: What Questions Did I Ask?
What is DEC2?
How does it work?
Who has it?
Should I make the story funny or not? (is DEC2 serious ie. like cancer)
What gene does it effect?
How many people have this?
Does this happen at birth?
Can this happen to me later on?
Why cant I have this, it seems very helpful?
Part 2:Sites I used through out this project
Google, Bing, YouTube, wiki and other sites listed below:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BHLHE41
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2884988/
http://www.news-medical.net/news/20090917/DEC2-gene-variation-allows-a-rare-number-of-people-to-require-less-sleep-than-others.aspx
http://www.webmd.com/sleep-disorders/news/20090813/gene-cuts-sleep-need#1
Part 3: Process I used
After reading one source I also decided to go to other websites just to confirm they all sound the same and to make sure I wasn’t messing up on false information.
Part 4: How did you verify the information you found?
I verified the information by going through more than just one source to confirm the information.
Part 5: How did the process of completing the assignment go? What could have been done better?
The overall process of creating this project was a success and had some troubles here and there but all else was fine. I started the assignment a little later than I should have and that could of had effected the way the whole project came out. The thing I could improve on is the explanation on how the mutation occurs. All in all I think this project was fun and I made the story how I think I look at it and could of been very different if someone else created this or would have done this mutation.
This video goes over what you need for sleep / how much sleep do you actually need: