Mutation of the Drosophila melanogaster serotonin transporter dSERT impacts sleep, courtship, and feeding behaviors.

ABSTRACT: The Serotonin Transporter (SERT) regulates extracellular serotonin levels and is the target of most current drugs used to treat depression. The mechanisms by which inhibition of SERT activity influences behavior are poorly understood. To address this question in the model organism Drosophila melanogaster, we developed new loss of function mutations in Drosophila SERT (dSERT). Previous studies in both flies and mammals have implicated serotonin as an important neuromodulator of sleep, and our newly generated dSERT mutants show an increase in total sleep and altered sleep architecture that is mimicked by feeding the SSRI citalopram. Differences in daytime versus nighttime sleep architecture as well as genetic rescue experiments unexpectedly suggest that distinct serotonergic circuits may mod

SUBMITTER: Knapp EM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9721485 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature