Ma Dingbang, Le Jasmine Quynh, Dai Xihuimin, Díaz Madelen M, Abruzzi Katharine C, Rosbash Michael
Interdisciplinary Research Center on Biology and Chemistry, Shanghai Institute of Organic Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai 201210, China.
Shanghai Key Laboratory of Aging Studies, Shanghai 201210, China.
Sci Adv. 2025 Jan 3;11(1):eadr4580. doi: 10.1126/sciadv.adr4580.
Circadian neurons within animal brains orchestrate myriad physiological processes and behaviors, but the contribution of these neurons to the regulation of sleep is not well understood. To address this deficiency, we leveraged single-cell RNA sequencing to generate a comprehensive census of transcriptomic cell types of clock neurons. We focused principally on the enigmatic DN3s, which constitute most fly brain clock neurons and were previously almost completely uncharacterized. These DN3s are organized into 12 clusters with unusual gene expression features compared to the more well-studied clock neurons. We further show that previously uncharacterized DN3 subtypes promote sleep through a G protein-coupled receptor, . Our findings indicate an intricate regulation of sleep behavior by clock neurons and highlight their remarkable diversity in gene expression and functional properties.
动物大脑中的昼夜节律神经元协调着无数的生理过程和行为，但这些神经元对睡眠调节的贡献尚未得到充分理解。为了解决这一不足，我们利用单细胞RNA测序对时钟神经元的转录组细胞类型进行了全面普查。我们主要关注神秘的DN3神经元，它们构成了果蝇大脑中大多数时钟神经元，之前几乎完全没有被描述过。与研究较多的时钟神经元相比，这些DN3神经元被组织成12个具有不同寻常基因表达特征的簇。我们进一步表明，以前未被描述的DN3亚型通过一种G蛋白偶联受体促进睡眠。我们的研究结果表明时钟神经元对睡眠行为有复杂的调节作用，并突出了它们在基因表达和功能特性方面的显著多样性。
