The importance of sleep on a cellular level

Sleep is very important. its recommended that a person should get around 8 hrs of sleep. But as a college student getting 8 hours of sleep is rare. A research conducted by team at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville revealed how not getting enough sleep effects us on the cellular level. the researchers state that not getting enough sleep can "short-circuit your system and interfere with a fundamental cellular process that drives physical growth, physiological adaptation and even brain activity". They based this claim off a prior study conducted on protein synthesis in plants. This study showed that "protein synthesis activity changed over the course of the day, but also that it was under the influence of the circadian clock". When we disrupt our circadian clock by studying all night or staying up till 2 or 3 in the morning watching netflix, it affects some of our bodily functions such as muscle contraction, and brain activity. The researchers stated that these functions depend on proteins that are regulated like those that were looked at in the study conducted on plants, therefore they claimed that if the regulation of proteins that deal with these functions are disrupted this could possible lead to side effects on a cellular level. This study has not incorporated any human test subjects. I am interested in how they plan to proceed with this study, and what the results of human studies could mean. 

here is a link to the article
http://www.news-medical.net/news/20151030/Lack-of-adequate-sleep-can-interfere-with-fundamental-cellular-process.aspx