The Nobel Prize-winning molecular mechanism of the body clock 

The scientists Jeffrey C. Hall, Michael Rosbash and Michael W. Young were recently awarded with the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for 2017. They discovered how our biological clock works and helps to prepare our physiology for the fluctuations of the day. Using fruit flies as model organism, they isolated a gene that controls the normal daily biological rhythm. They discovered that PER, the protein encoded by the gene period, accumulated during the night and was degraded during the day. Thus, PER protein levels oscillate over a 24-hour cycle, in synchrony with the circadian rhythm \cite{3152288}. Subsequently, they identified additional protein components of this machinery, exposing the mechanism governing the self-sustaining clockwork inside the cell. We now recognize that biological clocks function by the same principles in cells of other multicellular organisms, including humans. These discoveries explain how plants, animals and humans adapt their biological rhythm so that they are synchronized with the Earth's rotation \cite{release}