Recent advances in sleep genetics

Abstract

Sleep regulation has a strong genetic component. In this review, we highlight the recent advances in sleep genetics from knockout, point mutation, and GWAS studies. We overview specific genetic effects on REM versus NREM sleep as well as how the implicated genes fall in broad functional categories. Furthermore, we elucidate how genes affect different aspects of sleep including sleep duration, sleep consolidation, recovery sleep, and the circadian timing of sleep, demonstrating that genetic studies can be powerful in understanding how the body regulates sleep.