Molecular Genetics of Sleep in Drosophila

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Sleep research is important for people in modern world as we are faced with many problems associated with good sleep and sleep disorders. Recent studies indicate that Drosophila can be used as an excellent model organism to study on sleep. We have developed an CCD camera-PC system to track movement of a single fly. We found that Drosophila have an endogenous ultradian oscillator, which is masked by circadian rhythmic behaviors. The pdf clock mutant shows robust and precise ultradian rhythm with period length about 55 minutes. The ultradian rhythm of pdf mutant flies was not temperature compensated. We also studied the neural mechanism of sleep regulation by caffeine to reveal the possible role of the adenosine receptor.