Sleep-active neuron specification and sleep induction require FLP-11 neuropeptides to systemically induce sleep
- Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry, Germany
Abstract
Sleep is an essential behavioral state. It is induced by conserved sleep-active neurons that express GABA. However, little is known about how sleep neuron function is determined and how sleep neurons change physiology and behavior systemically. Here, we investigated sleep in C. elegans, which is induced by the single sleep-active neuron RIS. We found that the transcription factor LIM-6, which specifies GABAergic function, in parallel determines sleep neuron function through the expression of APTF-1, which specifies the expression of FLP-11 neuropeptides. Surprisingly FLP-11, and not GABA, is the major component that determines the sleep-promoting function of RIS. FLP-11 is constantly expressed in RIS. At sleep onset RIS depolarizes and releases FLP-11 to induce a systemic sleep state.
Article and author information
Author details
Copyright
© 2016, Turek et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
Metrics
-
- 3,891
- views
-
- 745
- downloads
-
- 105
- citations
Views, downloads and citations are aggregated across all versions of this paper published by eLife.
Citations by DOI
-
- 105
- citations for umbrella DOI https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.12499
Download links
A two-part list of links to download the article, or parts of the article, in various formats.
Downloads (link to download the article as PDF)
Open citations (links to open the citations from this article in various online reference manager services)
Cite this article (links to download the citations from this article in formats compatible with various reference manager tools)
Sleep-active neuron specification and sleep induction require FLP-11 neuropeptides to systemically induce sleep
eLife 5:e12499.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.12499
