Sleep Regulation in the Drosophila Brain:
A Tail of Two Processes
Orie Shafer, Ph.D.,
The Advanced Science Research Center (ASRC), CUNY
Sleep-like states are ubiquitous in the animal kingdom and are regulated by two distinct forms of regulation, circadian and homeostatic. Homeostatic mechanisms promote increases in sleep pressure during prolonged wakefulness. Circadian mechanisms determine the likelihood of sleep, increasing or decreasing its probability across the day. Though the molecular and neural mechanisms of circadian timekeeping are relatively well-understood, much less is known about the mechanistic basis of sleep homeostasis. The fly Drosophila melanogaster is a powerful model organism for the studying of sleep regulation. In this talk I will describe recent work from my lab examining how circadian timekeeping and sleep homeostasis operate in this fly and how these two regulatory processes converge to produce the proper timing and amount of sleep.
ORGANIZERS
Nesha Burghardt, Hunter College, CUNY
Asohan Amarasingham, City College of New York, CUNY