A conserved role for frizzled in sleep architecture

Nicholas R Gessner; Morteza Peiravi; Fan Zhang; Shemsiya Yimam; Danielle Springer; Susan T Harbison

doi:10.1093/sleepadvances/zpad045

A conserved role for frizzled in sleep architecture

Sleep Adv. 2023 Nov 28;4(1):zpad045. doi: 10.1093/sleepadvances/zpad045. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Nicholas R Gessner¹, Morteza Peiravi², Fan Zhang³, Shemsiya Yimam¹, Danielle Springer², Susan T Harbison¹

Affiliations

¹ Laboratory of Systems Genetics, National Heart Lung and Blood Institute, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, USA.
² Murine Phenotyping Core, National Heart Lung and Blood Institute, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, USA.
³ Transgenic Core, National Heart Lung and Blood Institute, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, USA.

Abstract

Previous studies of natural variants in Drosophila melanogaster implicated the Wnt signaling receptor frizzled in sleep. Given that the Wnt signaling pathway is highly conserved across species, we hypothesized that frizzled class receptor 1 (Fzd1), the murine homolog of frizzled, would also have a role in sleep. Using a CRISPR transgenic approach, we removed most of the Fzd1 coding region from C57BL/6N mice. We used a video assay to measure sleep characteristics in Fzd1-deficient mice. As Wnt signaling is known to affect visuospatial memory, we also examined the impact of the deletion on learning and memory using the novel object recognition (NOR) paradigm. Fzd1-deficient mice had altered sleep compared to littermate controls. The mice did not respond differently to the NOR paradigm compared to controls but did display anxiety-like behavior. Our strategy demonstrates that the study of natural variation in Drosophila sleep translates into candidate genes for sleep in vertebrate species such as the mouse.

Keywords: Drosophila melanogaster; Wnt signaling pathway; mus musculus; novel object recognition test; open-field test; sleep.

Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Sleep Research Society 2023. This work is written by (a) US Government employee(s) and is in the public domain in the US.