Metabolic Stress and Somatic Mutation: Exploring Links to Sleep Disorders

The relationship between metabolic stress, genomic instability, and sleep health is an important area of research with potential clinical benefits. This paper focuses on the harmful effects of oxidative stress-induced RNA damage and dysfunction (RDDs). RDDs are not simply differences between RNA and DNA sequences; they represent a broader range of RNA damage and malfunctions. This damage disrupts the fidelity of the transcriptome—the complete set of RNA molecules (mRNA, rRNA, tRNA, and non-coding RNA) which represents the functional output of the genome. RDDs occur when antioxidant enzymes cannot control excess reactive oxygen species (ROS) generated by metabolic stress, leading to damage of RNA and DNA molecules. This process is different from RNA editing, a normal and essential process where RNA sequences are intentionally modified to fine-tune gene expression. While both RDDs and RNA editing affect gene expression, their causes and consequences are very different.