Understanding the design principles of of sleep/wake dynamics in mammals

2015 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 26870858
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists (B)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: Neurophysiology / General neuroscience; Animal physiology/Animal behavior
• Research Institution: Institute of Physical and Chemical Research
• Principal Investigator: Sunagawa Genshiro 国立研究開発法人理化学研究所, 多細胞システム形成研究セン ター, 研究員 (70710250)
• Project Period (FY): 2014-04-01 – 2016-03-31
• Keywords: 睡眠時間 / NMDA / CRISPR / Nr3a / カルシウム

Outline of Final Research Achievements

Two major findings were achieved in this study: (1) Nr3a-KO is a short sleeper, and (2) calcium hyperpolarization pathway is involved in sleep duration regulation in mammals. (1) was achieved by knocking out all members of the NMDA receptor and testing the sleep phenotype in SSS, the snappy sleep stqger, which was developed in this research. (2) was discovered in two steps. In the first step, we created a computational neural model to predict which currents within a neuron are critical for maintaining the type of neural activity associated with slow-wave sleep and the calcium related components became candidates. In the second step, we created twenty-one knockout mice using the developed CRISPR technology, and confirmed that seven genes which was related to calcium dynamics indeed affected sleep duration.

Free Research Field

神経生理学