ショウジョウバエ脳における睡眠状態依存的感覚情報処理とメカニズムの解明

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We have made efforts toward building a set up in which olfactory circuits can be imaged under the microscope while simultaneously monitoring the fly’s behavior and detecting when it is asleep. We have also engineered a fly strain in which we can simultaneously induce sleep and monitor neural activity. The behavior of these flies was examined and it was found that upon exposure to 617nm red-light, the flies become quiescent, and when the light is switched off they become active again. These experiments confirm that this optogenetic tool can be used as a ‘sleep switch’ to transiently induce sleep by activating specific neurons in the fly brain. We then examined the activity of these neurons using calcium imaging, and confirmed that neural activity is increased during red light exposure. In parallel to testing sleep, we have also begun to record brain responses to different odors, allowing us to optimize our imaging settings for future sleep and sleep deprivation experiments.We expect our study will provide fundamental insights into how sleep affects sensory processing. Since a number of studies have shown that sleep in the fruit fly, Drosophila, shares many similarities with sleep in humans and other animals, any of the neural mechanisms and functions of sleep that we uncover here will likely be conserved in other animals.