PKU-IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Peking-Tsinghua Center for Life Sciences, Beijing Advanced Innovation Center for Genomics, Peking University School of Life Sciences, Beijing, China.
Chinese Institute for Brain Research, Beijing, China.
Sleep. 2021 Jul 9;44(7). doi: 10.1093/sleep/zsab017.
Sleep and arousal are both important for animals. The neurotransmitter acetylcholine (ACh) has long been found to promote both sleep and arousal in mammals, an apparent paradox which has also been found to exist in flies, causing much confusion in understanding sleep and arousal. Here, we have systematically studied all 13 ACh receptors (AChRs) in Drosophila to understand mechanisms underlying ACh function in sleep and arousal. We found that exogenous stimuli-induced arousal was decreased in nAChRα3 mutants, whereas sleep was decreased in nAChRα2 and nAChRβ2 mutants. nAChRα3 functions in dopaminergic neurons to promote exogenous stimuli-induced arousal, whereas nAChRα2 and β2 function in octopaminergic neurons to promote sleep. Our studies have revealed that a single transmitter can promote endogenous sleep and exogenous stimuli-induced arousal through distinct receptors in different types of downstream neurons.
睡眠和觉醒对于动物都很重要。神经递质乙酰胆碱（ACh）长期以来被发现能促进哺乳动物的睡眠和觉醒，这种明显的悖论也存在于果蝇中，导致对睡眠和觉醒的理解产生了很大的混淆。在这里，我们系统地研究了果蝇中的所有 13 种乙酰胆碱受体（AChRs），以了解 ACh 在睡眠和觉醒中的功能机制。我们发现，外源性刺激诱导的觉醒在 nAChRα3 突变体中减少，而在 nAChRα2 和 nAChRβ2 突变体中睡眠减少。nAChRα3 在多巴胺能神经元中发挥作用，促进外源性刺激诱导的觉醒，而 nAChRα2 和β2 在章鱼胺能神经元中发挥作用，促进睡眠。我们的研究表明，一种单一的递质可以通过不同类型下游神经元中的不同受体来促进内源性睡眠和外源性刺激诱导的觉醒。
