Synaptic Plasticity following sleep deprivation in the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster

FLORENCIA FERNANDEZ; NARA I MURARO

Buenos Aires

Congreso; 2nd FALAN (Federation of Latin-American and Caribbean Societies for Neuroscience) Congress; 2016

Federation of Latin-American and Caribbean Societies for Neuroscience

Thefruit fly Drosophila melanogaster isnowadays widely used as a model organism in neuroscience research. A firstreason for this is its versatile genetic tractability. Additionally, itpossesses a relatively simple nervous system yet it presents an extensivecollection of easily quantifiable behaviors.Thestudy of fly sleep behavior is relatively novel and is therefore a fertilefield for new research lines. Sleep deprivation, caused either by environmentalor physiological factors, is likely to interfere with the synaptic homeostasisprocesses associated to sleep. The aim of this project is to describe sleepdeprivation-associated changes of synaptic plasticity in the large lateralventral neurons (lLNvs). These neurons intersect the sleep and circadiancircuits of Drosophila and,interestingly, have been described to undergo synaptic changes under differentenvironmental conditions, including situations where sleep pressure is imposedto the organism. We are studying the levels and distribution of differentsynaptic markers after sleep deprivation, in particular we are assessingpeptidergic and classical neurotransmission. Moreover, via RNAi-mediateddownregulation of the GABA receptor on lLNvs, we are analyzing the role ofpredicted GABAergic inputs that mediate homeostatic sleep regulation into thephenomenon of synaptic plasticity studied. Information obtained from thisresearch project will help to produce a model of synaptic plasticity in thecontext of sleep deprivation. Moreover, it will contribute to the understandingof how arousal neurons process information and translate it into its neuronaloutputs.