Sleeping like a baby
The discovery that fruit fly larvae sleep will help shed light on early brain development.
Nearly all animals sleep more while they are still developing, suggesting that sleep is important in early life. Previous studies have shown that sleep may be required for building connections in the brain. However, it has been difficult to study the effects of sleep in earlier stages of brain development, when stem cells divide to create brain cells in a process known as “neurogenesis”. This is partly because, in mammals, most neurogenesis occurs in the womb.
Scientists have successfully studied sleep using the common fruit fly. But these studies have so far focused on adult flies, in which neurogenesis is mostly complete. Fly larvae, on the other hand, are widely used to study brain development and neurogenesis. Compared to mammals in the womb, fruit fly larvae are very easy to access and manipulate. However, unlike adult flies, no one had previously looked to see if larvae even display a behaviour that would fit the definition of sleep.
To see if fruit fly larvae do sleep, Szuperak et al. created the “LarvaLodge”, an apparatus in which individual larvae can be housed while having their activity monitored over time. In these lodges, a bright light was used to test how hard it is to arouse inactive fruit fly larvae, and further experiments asked what happens when larvae are prevented from resting. Then, to look at neurogenesis in the larvae, Szuperak et al. used a stain that labels dividing stem cells within the nervous system. Those cells could then be seen and counted when a larva was dissected and examined under a microscope.
The results from the LarvaLodge showed that fruit fly larvae do indeed sleep: they have extended periods of rest during which they react less to outside disturbances and adopt a particular posture (they retract their heads towards their bodies). Also when larvae were deprived of sleep, by shining a light or shaking, they compensated by sleeping more afterwards. Importantly, depriving the larvae of sleep also led to lower levels of neurogenesis. These findings establish the fruit fly larva as a new and useful system for studying the role of sleep in early development, and may help shed light on the role sleep plays in disorders affecting brain development.
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