Variants in Water Channel Gene Tied to More Restful Sleep

The gene, aquaporin-4, is critical in rodents for the cerebrospinal fluid bath the brain gets during sleep. It’s now also tied to slow wave electrical activity during deep sleep in people.

Written byAbby Olena, PhD

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As people go through phases of deep sleep, when neuronal activity patterns form slow waves across the brain, pulses of cerebrospinal fluid bathe the brain, possibly as a means of taking out molecular trash. Critical to the cleaning process is the water channel aquaporin-4 (AQP4), which is present in the membranes of astrocytes, according to experiments in rodents. AQP4 is necessary for the flow of CSF through the brain as it travels via a series of lymph-like vessels that make up the glymphatic system and clears waste from the brain.

In a paper published May 5 in PLOS Biology, researchers connect the dots between AQP4 and sleep in people. They showed that individuals with a set of eight single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in AQP4 have more slow wave energy as they sleep, which is characteristic of deep states of slumber, than those without the variants. And ...

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Meet the Author

Abby Olena, PhD
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As a freelancer for The Scientist, Abby reports on new developments in life science for the website. She has a PhD from Vanderbilt University and got her start in science journalism as the Chicago Tribune’s AAAS Mass Media Fellow in 2013. Following a stint as an intern for The Scientist, Abby was a postdoc in science communication at Duke University, where she developed and taught courses to help scientists share their research. In addition to her work as a science journalist, she leads science writing and communication workshops and co-produces a conversational podcast. She is based in Alabama.
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