Synchronizing food availability with the natural rhythm substantially improves reproduction and extends healthspan in laying hens.

Disrupted sleep due to nighttime eating can raise various concerns, impacting both physical health and overall well-being. Nevertheless, there is a lack of direct evidence linking nighttime eating with the female reproduction system, possibly due to the absence of suitable models. Here, we use the laying hen, a diurnal animal maintained under ad libitum feeding, as a vertebrate model to quantify the impact of nighttime eating on reproduction and aging. To do this, we have built an Arduino-based setup that regulates food availability and exclusively tracks the eating events of individuals. Our data indicate that synchronizing food availability with the natural sleep-wake rhythm substantially improves reproduction and extends healthspan in hens. With reproductive aging becoming progressively more prevalent in contemporary society due to the trend of delayed childbearing, synchronizing eating with the natural rhythm could help mitigate reproductive aging in vertebrates and potentially in humans as well.

A decline in avian cytokine expression with age revealed by commercially available cytokine array.

Cytokines are secreted immunomodulators that are key regulators of the avian immune response. Currently, the most commonly used method to follow cytokine expression is qPCR, which measures cellular levels of mRNA, rather their extracellular circulating levels. Here we present a commercially available cytokine array designed to assay circulating expression levels of multiple cytokines and immunomodulators simultaneously. Upon minor modifications to the manufacturer protocol, background noise was reduced, leading to a significant increase in the sensitivity of the device. Our data indicate that the array is reliable and produce consistent data between biological repeats. We tested the reproducibility of the array in a biologically relevant context by assessing age-related changes in circulating cytokines. While individual features did not show a consistent pattern, our data revealed a consistent decline in the median of all cytokine values, supporting the validity of the array in studying biological processes.