Previous work has pointed to diet—including protein intake—as one potential factor influencing how soundly we sleep. A study published Wednesday (March 22) in Cell adds evidence to the role of food by reporting that a protein-rich diet decreases the arousability of flies and mice. Furthermore, the researchers unraveled the mechanism underlying this effect in flies: dietary proteins activate cells in the gut that secrete a peptide, which signals to a group of neurons responsible for regulating response to mechanical vibrations.
The team wanted “to understand how we disconnect from all the sensory [information] when we’re sleeping,” says coauthor Iris Titos, a neuroscientist at Harvard Medical School. Previous research had pointed to a “strong genetic component,” so the first step in answering their question was to analyze the roles of around 3,400 fly genes. By silencing each of them using RNA interference and assessing how this affected the animals’ arousability, the ...
