Cirelli Chiara, Gutierrez Christina M, Tononi Giulio
Department of Psychiatry, University of Wisconsin, Madison, 53719, USA.
Neuron. 2004 Jan 8;41(1):35-43. doi: 10.1016/s0896-6273(03)00814-6.
Sleep is present in all species where it has been studied, but its functions remain unknown. To investigate what benefits sleep may bring at the cellular level, we profiled gene expression in awake and sleeping rats by using high-density microarrays. We find that approximately 10% of the transcripts in the cerebral cortex change their expression between day and night and demonstrate that half of them are modulated by sleep and wakefulness independent of time of day. We also show that molecular correlates of sleep are found in the cerebellum, a structure not known for generating sleep rhythms. Finally, we show that different functional categories of genes are selectively associated with sleep and wakefulness. The approximately 100 known genes whose expression increases during sleep provide molecular support for the proposed involvement of sleep in protein synthesis and neural plasticity and point to a novel role for sleep in membrane trafficking and maintenance.
睡眠存在于所有已被研究的物种中，但其功能仍然未知。为了探究睡眠在细胞水平上可能带来的益处，我们通过使用高密度微阵列分析了清醒和睡眠状态下大鼠的基因表达。我们发现，大脑皮层中约10%的转录本在白天和夜晚之间会改变其表达，并证明其中一半受睡眠和清醒状态的调节，与一天中的时间无关。我们还表明，在小脑（一个不以产生睡眠节律而闻名的结构）中发现了睡眠的分子相关物。最后，我们表明不同功能类别的基因与睡眠和清醒状态选择性相关。大约100个已知基因的表达在睡眠期间增加，这为睡眠参与蛋白质合成和神经可塑性的提议提供了分子支持，并指出了睡眠在膜运输和维持中的新作用。
