There's new evidence for genetic control of sleep duration. Carrie Gunn summarizes:
Scientists at Germany’s Ludwig Maximalians University of Munich have found that one gene, called ABCC9, influences sleep duration and could explain why certain people seem able to operate on limited amounts of shut-eye. The researchers studied responses to a sleep survey from more than 4,000 Europeans in seven different countries and also scanned their genomes. They found that people who had two copies of a particular variant of the ABCC9 gene generally reported sleeping for shorter periods than those who had two copies of a different version of the gene.
But Kathryn Doyle has doubts that sleeping less is a genetic advantage:
[D]oes sleeping less really mean you will be more successful, even at the expense of your health? Do more successful people sleep less? To the contrary, the National Institutes of Health say we are designed to sleep more than eight hours per night. Further confusing matters, other sleep researchers have disputed the findings of that federal study. … There’s a lot of interesting research that actually suggests late risers are smarter than early risers. So maybe I’m not doing so bad, ahem.
The Dish 