Dietary regulation of sleep in a blood-feeding insect

About This Grant

Proposal Summary Neural regulation of sleep, appetite and energy homeostasis is critical to an animal’s survival and under stringent evolutionary pressure. Despite the prevalence of disorders associated with metabolism and sleep, the neural and genetic processes that regulate interactions between these two systems is unclear. This proposal will investigate how sleep is regulated by blood feeding in the disease vector mosquito Aedes aegypti. We will systematically define sleep in mosquitos, and determine the dietary amino acids that promote sleep. We will then screen neuropeptides for regulators of sleep to test for neuromodulators required for sleep following a blood meal. These experiments leverage decades of sleep analysis in fruit flies, to define sleep in a blood feeding insect. The findings have potential to identify conserved regulators of sleep-feeding interactions, as well as providing the first investigation of how macronutrients regulate sleep in a blood-feeding insect. Further, the methodology used to define sleep can be readily applied to other mosquito species. Therefore, the completion of this work will establish Ae. aegypti as a model for studying dietary regulation of sleep.