Project description:<p>Chronic sleep loss profoundly impacts metabolic health and shortens lifespan, but studies of the mechanisms involved have focused largely on acute sleep deprivation. To identify metabolic consequences of chronically reduced sleep, we conducted unbiased metabolomics on heads of three adult Drosophila short-sleeping mutants with very different mechanisms of sleep loss: fumin (fmn), redeye (rye), and sleepless (sss). Common features included elevated ornithine and polyamines, with lipid, acyl-carnitine, and TCA cycle changes suggesting mitochondrial dysfunction. Studies of excretion demonstrate inefficient nitrogen elimination in adult sleep mutants, likely contributing to their polyamine accumulation. Increasing levels of polyamines, particularly putrescine, promote sleep in control flies but poison sleep mutants. This parallels the broadly enhanced toxicity of high dietary nitrogen load from protein in chronically sleep-restricted Drosophila, including both sleep mutants and flies with hyper-activated wake-promoting neurons. Together, our results implicate nitrogen stress as a novel mechanism linking chronic sleep loss to adverse health outcomes-and perhaps for linking food and sleep homeostasis at the cellular level in healthy organisms.</p>
Project description:A method for the long-term maintenance of germ-free flies was established using aseptic isolators. The methodology effectively and reliably yields large numbers of germ-free flies in homogeneous cultures. Germ-free flies exhibited increased lifespan (only female flies) and decreased egg production, markedly reduced fat storage, less midday sleep, and enhanced aggressiveness (male flies). Fructilactobacillus—a species of fly intestinal microbes—was re-colonized in germ-free flies, and these gnotobiotic flies were successfully maintained for numerous generations. The proteome of those flies were analyzed.
Project description:Genome-wide profiling of rhythmic gene expression has offered new avenues for studying the contribution of circadian clock to diverse biological processes. Sleep has been considered one of the most important physiological processes that are regulated by the circadian clock, however, the effects of chronic sleep loss on rhythmic gene expression remain poorly understood. In the present study, we exploited Drosophila sleep mutants insomniac1 (inc1) and wide awakeD2 (wakeD2) as models for chronic sleep loss. We profiled the transcriptomes of heads collected from 4-week-old wild type flies, inc1 and wakeD2 at timepoints around the clock. Analysis of gene oscillation revealed a substantial loss of rhythmicity in inc1 and wakeD2 compared to wild type flies, with most of the affected genes common to both mutants. The disruption of gene oscillation was not due to changes in average gene expression levels. We also identified a subset of genes whose loss of rhythmicity was shared among animals with chronic sleep loss and old flies, suggesting a contribution of aging to chronic, sleep-loss-induced disruption of gene oscillation.
Project description:Because pink1-mutant flies exhibit a global shutdown of protein synthesis, we decided to measure the levels of individual proteins in adult flies through quantitative proteomics.
Project description:HPLC MS/MS confirmation of lipids found to be heterogeneously distributed between rested and sleep-deprived Drosophila melanogaster brain samples by MALDI MSI. Data belongs to publication "Kv Channels Integrate Sleep Pressure in a Voltage-Gated Lipid Peroxidation Memory"
Project description:We used a microarray platform to survey the daily levels of 78 D. melanogaster miRNAs in adult heads of wildtype control flies and the arrhythmic clock mutant cyc01. At least 2 miRNAs were identified that showed robust daily abundance changes in control flies but not the cyc01 mutant. Keywords: microRNA, Circadian regulation yw and yw;cyc01 flies were maintained in standard media. For collections, approximately 50-100 young (2-5 day old) flies were placed in vials that were incubated at 25oC for four days in standard 12hr light-12hr dark cycles [LD; where zeitgeber time 0 (ZT0) is defined as lights-on]. Flies were collected by freezing in dry ice during the fourth LD cycle at the following times; ZT1, 7, 13 and 19. Subsequently low molecular RNAs were extracted for microarray analysis using a mirMAX microarray.