The research group of the International Institute for Integrative Sleep Medicine, University of Tsukuba comprehensively compares and analyzes phosphorylated proteins in the brains of two "sleepiness model" mice, and is considered to be important for the substance of sleepiness and the function of sleep2. A type of protein was identified.
Sleep is a familiar activity that everyone does every day, but it is still surrounded by many mysteries.For example, "sleepiness" is one of the desires for sleep, but the substance of what is happening in the sleepy brain is completely unknown.
This time, the group used two model mice to elucidate the mechanism that determines sleep demand.The first is a mouse that is deprived of sleep and becomes drowsy, and the second is a Sleepy mutant mouse that has a mutation in the Sirk3 gene and rapidly becomes drowsy during awakening. We comprehensively analyzed the biochemical changes common in the brains of two types of mice, and identified 2 types of phosphorylated proteins involved in drowsiness.Furthermore, in order to investigate how the phosphorylation state of these proteins changes according to the degree of drowsiness, when the mice were deprived of sleep in stages, the phosphorylation state progressed according to the deprivation time. I understood.That is, the amount of phosphorylated protein increased according to the degree of sleep desire.
The group named this group of proteins SNIPPs (Sleep-Need-Index-Phosphoproteins), and found that 69 of them are important proteins for synaptic function and structure. rice field.
This is the world's first comprehensive study on the molecular substance of drowsiness, and this result was published in the English scientific journal "Nature".
Paper information:[Nature] Quantitative phosphoproteomic analysis of the molecular photoresist of sleep need
