Using fruit flies to study sleep regulation and function across development

March 7, 2023

Noon – 1:00 p.m. | SCCRS/CCRS room 250 or join via Zoom
Meeting ID: 936 9832 4344
Passcode: 855562

Presented by:
Matthew Kayser, MD, PhD
Assistant Professor of Psychiatry
Physician-of-Record
Perelman School of Medicine
University of Pennsylvania

Sleep abnormalities are pervasive across nearly all psychiatric disorders, and disrupted sleep early in life has been linked to mental illness in adulthood. Work in the Kayser Lab stands to connect this fundamental behavior – sleep – to both pathogenesis and novel treatment of neuropsychiatric disease. Our particular focus is in understanding how sleep contributes to sculpting brain circuits during development and in other times of life. To answer these questions, we primarily utilize the powerful genetic system Drosophila melanogaster (the fruit fly). Recent work has pinpointed key genes coupling sleep disturbances to neurodevelopmental disorders. Moreover, our findings support the idea that emergence of circadian sleep patterns during development enables more complex cognitive processes, including the onset of enduring memories.