BioClocks UK: Supporting The Biological Rhythm Research Community To Deliver Impact

英国有一个研究生物节律的蓬勃发展的研究社区，最引人注目的是我们大多数人都认为体内的24小时生物钟决定了我们的规律睡眠模式。然而，24小时生物钟调节着行为、生理和新陈代谢各方面的昼夜节律，这是生活在我们旋转星球表面的动物、植物、真菌和一些细菌的普遍特征。因此，生物体已经调整了它们的生活方式，以适应无情的24小时光暗、温暖和寒冷的循环。因此，生物钟的紊乱会对健康和福祉产生许多不利影响也就不足为奇了，这一点在英国20%的长期轮班工作的劳动力中表现得最为明显。在过去的11年里，英国和公共和私人的国际资助机构在英国的生物钟/睡眠研究上投资了1.6亿英镑，反映了生物钟在人类、动植物健康、睡眠、药理学、工作场所照明和警觉性、心理健康、农业、昆虫学等方面的重要性，认识到扰乱时钟对我们24小时社会的巨大经济代价。我们的三位美国合作者发现了所有动物时钟的分子基础，他们被授予2017年诺贝尔生理学或医学奖，进一步承认了时间生物学的巨大科学贡献。尽管取得了这样的成功，但英国研究的一个主要问题，不仅仅是在时间生物学方面，是将这项研究转化为影响。研究补助金的首席调查员必须专注于完成工作，作为个人，他可能会发现很难花必要的时间向适当的利益集团和利益相关者传播和宣传结果，甚至可能不完全知道谁可能代表相关机构。英国生物时钟公司代表的是对生物节律感兴趣的研究人员。由于来自不同大学和研究所的一些志愿者的善意和辛勤工作，英国生物时钟公司今年成立了一个非正式网络，以支持英国时钟研究社区，并与网站和社区达成协议，以促进外联、培训和激发影响力。我们建议通过聘请一名全职协调员来为英国生物时钟奠定更坚实的基础，他将释放我们与相关利益相关者的沟通潜力，并提高人们对时钟研究在教育、医疗、商业和国家政策环境中的可译性的认识。我们得到了同等的欧洲、美国和日本组织的大力支持，这些组织正在研究这些相同的政策领域，例如，提出了导致日本暂停夏令时的健康和社会证据。研究社区是实现这些目标的关键，因此我们也将更直接地支持研究人员。协调员将通过安排会议来协调英国时间生物学小组的网络，以确定共同的研究兴趣，从而帮助确定进一步合作资助的优先事项。他/她将协调对研究人员的数据管理、政策参与、媒体互动方面的培训，并维护英国生物时钟的网络资源。Bioclock UK有一个重要的信息要传递给包括政府在内的利益集团，将我们的研究转化为行动将远远超过对单一研究提案的任何投资，即使从经济角度来看也是如此。英国时钟社区为促进与利益相关者的接触而进行的协调和集中的努力，在规模上相形见绌，而任何一个人或一群调查人员在致力于影响方面的时间有限。

The UK has a thriving research community that studies biological rhythms, most notably, the internal 24 hour body clock that most of us recognise as dictating, among many other things, our regular sleep patterns. However, the 24 hour body clock regulates circadian (Latin 'circa', about, 'diem', day) rhythms in all aspects of behaviour, physiology and metabolism and is a ubiquitous characteristic of the life of animals, plants, fungi and some bacteria that inhabit the surface of our rotating planet. Organisms have thus adapted their lifestyles to anticipate the relentless 24 hour cycles of light and dark, warmth and cold. Consequently, it is hardly surprising that disruption of the body clock can have many adverse effects on health and well-being and this is observed most acutely in the 20% of the UK workforce that works chronic shifts. UK and international funding agencies, public and private, have invested £160M in UK research on biological clocks/sleep in the last 11 years reflecting the importance of the biological clock in human, animal and plant health, sleep, pharmacology, lighting in the workplace and alertness, mental health, agriculture, entomology etc with the recognition of enormous economic cost that disrupted clocks have on our 24-hour society. Three of our American collaborators who identified the molecular basis of all animal clocks were awarded the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, further acknowledging the immense scientific contribution of chronobiology. Despite this success, a major problem of UK research, not just in chronobiology, is translating that research into impact. A principal investigator of a research grant has to focus on getting the work done and as an individual may find it quite difficult to devote the necessary time to disseminate and publicise the results to appropriate interest groups and stake holders and may even not be fully aware of who might represent the relevant bodies. BioClocks UK represents researchers whose interests lie in the study of biological rhythms. Due to goodwill and hard work of a few volunteers from various universities and institutes, BioClocks UK was established this year as an informal network to support the UK clock research community, with a website and community agreement to foster outreach, training and to stimulate impact. We propose to place BioClocks UK on a firmer footing by employing a fulltime coordinator who will unlock our communication potential to relevant stake holders and raise awareness of the translatability of clock research into educational, medical, commercial and national policy environments. We have strong support from the equivalent European, American and Japanese organisations, which are working on these same policy areas, for example presenting the health and social evidence that put Daylight Saving Time on hold in Japan. The research community is key to these aims, so we will also support researchers more directly. The coordinator will coordinate networks of UK chronobiology groups by arranging meetings to identify mutual research interests thereby helping to define priorities for further collaborative funding. He/she will coordinate training for researchers in data management, policy engagement, media interactions and maintain the BioClocks UK web resources. Bioclocks UK has an important message to deliver to interest groups, including government, and translating our research into action will far outstrip, even simply in economic terms, any investment in a single research proposal. A coordinated and focused effort by the UK clock community to foster engagement with stakeholders eclipses in scale what could be achieved by any individual or group of investigators who have limited time to devote to impact.