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Sleepy and Dreamless - Study of Sleep Abnormalities in Mice

W

Wally

Senior Member
Messages
1,167
Genetic mutations in the pathways that control sleep. Could this study in mice begin to unlock additional clues in the sleep abnormalities experienced by humans? The sodium channel pathway continues to provide a trail of bread crumbs - I wonder if these clues are being actively investigated in current M.E. research?

The first unbiased genetic screen for sleep defects in mice has yielded two interesting mutants, Sleepy, which sleeps excessively, and Dreamless, which lacks rapid eye movement (REM) sleep.
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Dreamless mice, which have reduced rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, carry a mutation in a sodium channel. Understanding the effects of the dreamless mutation was more straightforward. The mutation increases the conductivity of a leaky sodium channel that was previously known to regulate neuronal excitability. The neuronal populations that terminate REM sleep have too much excitability, said Yanagisawa, which is why the mice have reduced REM sleep.
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More information about the study is available at "Science Daily" -
Mouse mutants with sleep defects may shed light on the mysteries of sleep
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/11/161102144218.htm and at "Nature" - Forward-genetics analysis of sleep in randomly mutagenized mice. Nature, 2016; DOI: 10.1038/nature20142
 
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