Is it possible to modify clock genes to improve health?

Abstract

Disturbances of circadian rhythms due to clock gene alterations-such as single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP), genetic ablation, gene overexpression, and epigenetic inactivation-have been associated with several diseases, like cancer, metabolic syndrome, sleep disorders, and neurological and psychiatric disorders. A considerable body of evidence suggests that correcting the molecular alterations or mutations in clock gene expression could provide alternative therapeutic strate-gies to treat disorders involving the biological clock. Gene therapy allows us to modify the levels of expression of different genes. This can be accomplished, among other methods, by overexpressing a gene that is downregulated or absent in a disease or by silencing a mutated gene, or one that is expressed in an abnormally high level, and is an underlying cause of a disease. There are very few instances of the use of gene therapy strategies in chronobiology to regulate gene expression. In this chapter, we will analyze the role of clock genes alterations in different diseases and discuss the potential use of gene therapy to treat them.