Sleep homeostasis regulated by 5HT2b receptor in a small subset of neurons in the dorsal fan-shaped body of Drosophila
- Peking University, China
- Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, United States
- Nanjing Medical University, China
Abstract
Our understanding of molecular mechanisms underlying sleep homeostasis is limited. We have taken a systematic approach to study neural signaling by the transmitter 5-hydroxytryptamine (5-HT) in Drosophila. We have generated knockout and knockin lines for Trh, the 5-HT synthesizing enzyme and all five 5-HT receptors, making it possible for us to determine their expression patterns and to investigate their functional roles. Loss of the Trh, 5HT1a or 5HT2b gene decreased sleep time whereas loss of the Trh or 5HT2b gene diminished sleep rebound after sleep deprivation. 5HT2b expression in a small subset of neurons in the dorsal fan-shaped body (dFB) is functionally essential: elimination of the 5HT2b gene from these neurons led to loss of sleep homeostasis. Genetic ablation of 5HT2b neurons in the dFB decreased sleep and impaired sleep homeostasis. Our results have shown that serotonergic signaling in specific neurons is required for regulating sleep homeostasis.
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Author details
Funding
National Natural Science Foundation of China (Project 31421003)
- Yi Rao
National Natural Science Foundation of China (Project 31000547)
- Juan Huang
Beijing Municipal Natural Science Foundation (Z111107067311058)
- Yi Rao
Beijing Municpal Natural Science Foundation (Z151100003915121)
- Yi Rao
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Copyright
© 2017, Qian 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.
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Sleep homeostasis regulated by 5HT2b receptor in a small subset of neurons in the dorsal fan-shaped body of Drosophila
eLife 6:e26519.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.26519
