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A comment on Sleep helps to repair damaged DNA in neurons, scientists find. Parent comment

Re:Sleep helps to repair damaged DNA in neurons, scientists ... by ggggtez on Tuesday March 05, 2019 @02:55PM (#19313646)
Maybe, but maybe not. Evolution only has to be better suited to the current environment, but it doesn't necessarily need to result in perfect creatures.

Creatures could have developed the day/night awake/resting cycle independent of sleep just because at night you want to conserve energy to stay warm, and it's difficult to hunt at night.

Once creature developed day/night modality, taking advantage of that time to run repair processes would be an evolutionary advantage.

The question isn't why people sleep, it's why can't creatures run repair processes 24/7? If they could do that, then evolving to not need sleep would be a lot easier.

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Re:Sleep helps to repair damaged DNA in neurons, scientists ... by AstralStorm on Wednesday March 06, 2019 @02:55PM (#19322146)
Most do, but you cannot use certain processes that stop cell metabolism for prolonged time while actually requiring that metabolism.

Some organisms have more advanced repair mechanisms than others too. There are trade-offs involved, e.g. immune system.

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