ABSTRACT
Introduction............................................................................................................145 Forward Genetics to Understand Sleep Regulation and Functions......................146 Fly Sleep Shares Many Features with Mammalian Sleep....................................147 Complex Behaviors and Single-Gene Mutations..................................................151 The Genetics of Sleep ...........................................................................................152 Short Sleepers, Sleep Deprivation, and Sleep Restriction ....................................153 The Sleep Phenotype in Wild-Type Drosophila Lines..........................................153 The Sleep Phenotype in Drosophila Mutant Lines ...............................................154 Conclusions............................................................................................................158 References..............................................................................................................159
Sleep is present in all species where it has been studied, but its functions remain unknown. A sufficient amount of sleep constitutes a fundamental biological need. Curtailing the amount of sleep in normal sleepers affects performance, vigilance, memory, and health. Like all complex behaviors, sleep is both environmentally modulated and genetically determined; however the responsible genes have not been discovered. To identify them we have initiated a genetic screening for short sleepers in the fruit fly
