CHE 598 Seminar: Astrocyte integration of sleep and circadian clocks by the Fabp7 gene

About the event

SPEAKER: Dr. Jason Gerstner, Assistant Professor WSU Elson Floyd College of Medicine

BIOGRAPHY:

Dr. Gerstner is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Translational Medicine and Physiology in the Elson S. Floyd College of Medicine, an inaugural Steve Gleason Institute for Neuroscience Fellow and core faculty member of the Sleep and Performance Research Center at WSU. He has expertise in the neuroscience of sleep and circadian rhythms with a specialty focus on glial cells, particularly astrocytes.  His research interests are broad, and his laboratory uses multiple species and approaches to determine how underlying cellular, molecular and genetic regulation of sleep and circadian rhythms interact with other processes, such as memory formation and neurodegenerative disease progression.

ABSTRACT:

The astrocyte-enriched Fabp7 gene generates a unique transcript with synchronized circadian cycling throughout the whole mammalian brain, including regions necessary for sleep and wakefulness. Previous studies showed a time-of-day oscillation in relative levels of Fabp7 mRNA and protein in the fine perisynaptic astrocytic process compartment in the mouse brain.  Functional studies showed that Fabp7-induced sleep in transgenic fruit flies was sufficient to produce enhancement of long-term memory.  A single nucleotide polymorphism in the human Fabp7 gene is associated with fragmented sleep, a phenotype which is recapitulated in Fabp7 KO mice and transgenic flies expressing the human mutant Fabp7 variant in astrocytes.  Current studies are exploring the phylogenetic conservation of Fabp7 cellular and molecular mechanisms that are responsible for these behavioral outcomes and how their dysfunction may be implicated in neurological disorders and neurodegenerative disease.