Model
Digital Document
Publisher
Florida Atlantic University
Description
Sleep and feeding are processes essential to nearly all complex organisms, impacting the
behavioral output of an animal through homeostatic drive. In Drosophila melanogaster it has
been shown that starvation leads to sleep suppression through the signaling of core clock proteins
that regulate the animal circadian rhythm. Furthermore overexpression of short neuropeptide, a
sleep-promoting inhibitory modulator, increases sleep in animals and alters feeding behavior.
While these findings provide a framework of the interaction between the pressures to feed and
sleep, they are bi-modal shifts, limiting the understanding of this relationship between to its
extreme states. Using the Activity Recording CAFÉ ARC, a tool for measuring the sleep and
feeding of individual flies, we tuned either behavior and observed corresponding effects. By
shifting food concentrations we are able to control hunger state of an animal while recording its
sleep and activity patterns. By coupling this system with a gentle air puff we were also able to
control sleep while measuring feeding. We found that the hunger state of an animal had a direct
effect on sleep and sleep consolidation. Conversely, we show that increasing sleep pressure led
to increased feeding and reduced satiety as calculated through the animal’s prandial behavior. In
addition, we show that the direct relationship of the sleep/feeding is disrupted by core clock gene
mutations but not by secondary clock genes such as period. By use of the ARC and bi-directional
perturbation, we provide a higher resolution understanding of the sleep-feeding axis.
behavioral output of an animal through homeostatic drive. In Drosophila melanogaster it has
been shown that starvation leads to sleep suppression through the signaling of core clock proteins
that regulate the animal circadian rhythm. Furthermore overexpression of short neuropeptide, a
sleep-promoting inhibitory modulator, increases sleep in animals and alters feeding behavior.
While these findings provide a framework of the interaction between the pressures to feed and
sleep, they are bi-modal shifts, limiting the understanding of this relationship between to its
extreme states. Using the Activity Recording CAFÉ ARC, a tool for measuring the sleep and
feeding of individual flies, we tuned either behavior and observed corresponding effects. By
shifting food concentrations we are able to control hunger state of an animal while recording its
sleep and activity patterns. By coupling this system with a gentle air puff we were also able to
control sleep while measuring feeding. We found that the hunger state of an animal had a direct
effect on sleep and sleep consolidation. Conversely, we show that increasing sleep pressure led
to increased feeding and reduced satiety as calculated through the animal’s prandial behavior. In
addition, we show that the direct relationship of the sleep/feeding is disrupted by core clock gene
mutations but not by secondary clock genes such as period. By use of the ARC and bi-directional
perturbation, we provide a higher resolution understanding of the sleep-feeding axis.
Member of