Project description:A major driver of neural circuit complexity is cellular heterogeneity. We sought to profile all of the neural cell types in the Drosophila embryo at stage 17, a period of rapid synapse and circuit formation in the central nervous system. To do so, we performed whole embryo dissociations of Drosophila embryos followed by single cell RNA sequencing. We then computationally segregated neural cell types based on known gene expression for all neurons (elav) and glia (repo). We hope that this dataset will serve as a community resource for other researchers interested in the molecular determinants of circuit complexity.
Project description:In this study we use a combination of proteomics Label-Free quantification methods to monitor protein expression changes over a time course of more than 20 hours of embryo development in Drosophila melanogaster.
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>