Nobel Conference Lecture -Using a Simple Animal Model to Understand How and Why We SleepOctober 1 at 10:30–11:15 a.m.

Nobel Conference Second Lecture

Using a simple animal model to understand how and why we sleep

Amita Seghal, PhD
John Herr Musser Professor of Neuroscience
Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania

Sleep remains a major mystery of biology. Why we spend approximately a third of our lives sleeping and what it is that makes us sleepy are major questions about sleep that lack satisfactory answers. There is universal agreement that lack of sleep impairs performance, especially cognitive ability, during waking hours, and considerable evidence supports adverse effects of sleep loss on other physiological parameters as well. Thus, sleep may be regarded as important for waking function. However, what happens during sleep to facilitate awake performance and promote health? Driven by the successful use of Drosophila [fruit fly] for deciphering molecular mechanisms of the circadian clock, we developed a Drosophila model to address molecular and cellular underpinnings of sleep. Through the use of forward genetic screens, we have identified genes and tissues that affect sleep amount. Coupled with tests of candidate hypotheses for sleep function, we are starting to get a handle on cellular functions of sleep that may be broadly relevant for the brain, and perhaps even the body. In general, we find that sleep is important for metabolic homeostasis, which includes the clearance of metabolic waste. Together this work is leading to an understanding of cellular/molecular processes that underlie sleep.