An international collaborative research group led by Hiroki Ueda, a team leader at RIKEN (Professor at the University of Tokyo), discovered two genes essential for REM sleep and succeeded in producing mice that survived almost no REM sleep for the first time. ..The research group includes the University of Tokyo, Yamaguchi University, Kinki University, and Queensland Institute of Technology (Australia).
REM sleep is considered to be an intermediate state between arousal and non-REM sleep, in which the body is sleeping but the brain is awake.Acetylcholine, one of the neurotransmitters, is known as a molecule that induces REM sleep, but it has not been known whether it is really essential for REM sleep.
This time, the international collaborative research group will make full use of individual-level genetic methods such as comprehensive gene analysis using microarrays of 49 sites of the brain and nervous system, development of a new mouse genetic tool "tTR", and triple CRISPR method. , Chrm1 and Chrm3, which are acetylcholine receptor genes, have been shown to play an important role in controlling sleep volume.In particular, we found that REM sleep was hardly detected in mice in which both genes were deleted at the same time.
Utilizing this result, it is expected that technologies and drugs for specifically manipulating REM sleep will be developed, and further sleep research and development of effective therapeutic drugs for sleep disorders will progress.Also, for the first time in this study, we confirmed the existence of individuals who can survive even if REM sleep disappears.This may be an opportunity to reexamine the question of whether REM sleep is really essential for animals, what role it plays if it is essential, and how much sleep can be reduced.
Paper information:[Cell Reports] Muscarinic acetylcholine receptors Chrm1 and Chrm3 are essential for REM sleep