British researchers have claimed to have identified a group of special cells that play an important role in regulating the human body clock, a discovery that could provide clues to help combat jet lag and other sleep disorders.

A team of experts from the University of Manchester studied the special cells which had been thought to be inactive during the day - but their research found the opposite is true.

“The research will allow a new approach to being able to tune our daily clock,” Professor Hugh Piggins, an expert in neuroscience at the University, was quoted as saying by the BBC.

Piggins also expressed hope that the research will pave the way to combating sleep disorders triggered by body clock malfunctions and allow a new approach to being able to tune our daily clock.

“The traditional model said the clock and the brain communicated to the rest of the brain via the number of electrical impulses that the brain cells were producing,” he said, adding, “these impulses would travel around the brain, telling it what time of day it is.”

According to him, they found at least two types of cells in the brain that behave unlike other cells seen so far.

These cells “contain a key gene - per1 - which allows them to sustain unusually high levels of ‘excitability’,” Piggins said.

When the cells are “excited” they seem quiet or even dead. On calming down, they become normally active again. “It is this activity which tells the human body when to be awake,” Piggins said.

“There’s a lot of interest in the pharmaceutical industry, obviously, to try to develop chemical treatments to reset your daily clock to help counteract things like jet lag.

The study, according to the expert, marks the first time such “quiet” cells have been studied.

“This may mean that elsewhere in the brain there are cells like this that can also survive these very unusual conditions,” he added.