Novel hypnotics of Japanese traditional herbal medicines to caffeine-induced insomnia in Drosophila by using Newly-developed automated sleep and rhythm analysis system (AutoCircaS)

Inoue E, Suzuki T, Nakayama T, Yoshimura T, Sudo K, Shimizu Y, Iwaki Y, Kawasaki H, Ishida N · Gene · 2022 December

DOI 10.1016/j.gene.2022.146852

Objective

To investigate the development and utility of a novel automated sleep and rhythm analysis system (AutoCircaS) for monitoring sleep behaviors in Drosophila and small fishes.

Conclusions

The study concluded that AutoCircaS is effective in detecting caffeine-induced insomnia in flies under different conditions and identified certain traditional herbal medicines that can improve sleep disturbances in Drosophila.

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Insights

The researchers developed a new system, AutoCircaS, that can effectively study sleep and rhythm in small animals and can screen for hypnotic sedatives.

The researchers innovated a fresh system called AutoCircaS to examine various behaviors such as sleep, mating, and circadian rhythms in small animals like Drosophila flies and medaka fish. This was achieved through utilizing time-lapse imaging technology in a space unrestricted by confines of the traditional Drosophila Activity Monitor system. The system successfully detected insomnia in flies induced by caffeine, under both light-dark and constant dark conditions. The application of AutoCircaS led to significant improvements in caffeine-induced insomnia when the flies were treated with traditional Japanese herbal medicines such as KyushinKannouGan-ki, NouKassei, and Sansoninto. This suggests that AutoCircaS system can be extremely helpful in the analysis of sleep in small animals and in screening potential sedative-hypnotics from a wide variety of sources.