Reduced sleep in Drosophila Shaker mutants

Chiara Cirelli, Daniel Bushey, Sean Hill, Reto Huber, Robert Kreber, Barry Ganetzky and Giulio Tononi ()
Additional contact information
Chiara Cirelli: University of Wisconsin Madison
Daniel Bushey: University of Wisconsin Madison
Sean Hill: University of Wisconsin Madison
Reto Huber: University of Wisconsin Madison
Robert Kreber: University of Wisconsin Madison
Barry Ganetzky: University of Wisconsin Madison
Giulio Tononi: University of Wisconsin Madison

Nature, 2005, vol. 434, issue 7037, 1087-1092

Abstract: Abstract Most of us sleep 7–8 h per night, and if we are deprived of sleep our performance suffers greatly; however, a few do well with just 3–4 h of sleep—a trait that seems to run in families. Determining which genes underlie this phenotype could shed light on the mechanisms and functions of sleep. To do so, we performed mutagenesis in Drosophila melanogaster, because flies also sleep for many hours and, when sleep deprived, show sleep rebound and performance impairments. By screening 9,000 mutant lines, we found minisleep (mns), a line that sleeps for one-third of the wild-type amount. We show that mns flies perform normally in a number of tasks, have preserved sleep homeostasis, but are not impaired by sleep deprivation. We then show that mns flies carry a point mutation in a conserved domain of the Shaker gene. Moreover, after crossing out genetic modifiers accumulated over many generations, other Shaker alleles also become short sleepers and fail to complement the mns phenotype. Finally, we show that short-sleeping Shaker flies have a reduced lifespan. Shaker, which encodes a voltage-dependent potassium channel controlling membrane repolarization and transmitter release, may thus regulate sleep need or efficiency.

Date: 2005
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature03486 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nature:v:434:y:2005:i:7037:d:10.1038_nature03486

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/

DOI: 10.1038/nature03486

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

More articles in Nature from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().