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Comment
. 2019 Mar 27;17(3):e3000199.
doi: 10.1371/journal.pbio.3000199. eCollection 2019 Mar.

Staying awake to stay alive: A circuit controlling starvation-induced waking

Krishna Melnattur  1 , Paul Shaw  1
Affiliations
Comment

Staying awake to stay alive: A circuit controlling starvation-induced waking

Krishna Melnattur et al. PLoS Biol. .

Abstract

The balance of sleep and wake is plastic and changes to meet environmental demands. Mechanisms that allow an animal to suppress sleep and maintain waking in potentially adverse situations could serve adaptive functions in evolution. The fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, is well poised as a system in which to explore these questions. The environment changes sleep and wake in flies, e.g., starvation induces waking in Drosophila as it does in many animals. Further, the sophisticated neurobiological toolkit available to Drosophila researchers gives the fly a great advantage as a system to investigate the precise neurobiological mechanisms underlying these adaptive changes. In a paper in this issue of PLOS Biology, Yurgel and colleagues elegantly exploit the advantages of the Drosophila model to map starvation-induced wakefulness to a single pair of peptidergic neurons and their partners.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Figures

Fig 1
Fig 1. Schematic depicting the various Lk-expressing cells in the adult fly CNS.
Lk is expressed in approximately 30 neurons in the adult fly CNS, distributed in four distinct clusters, that appear to subserve different functions. The ABLK were recently implicated in maintenance of water homeostasis, presumably by acting on Lkr in peripheral tissues. In the brain, Lk signaling between the LHLK and LkrFB has been previously implicated in the expression of circadian activity and postprandial sleep. In a study in this issue of PLOS Biology, Yurgel and colleagues elegantly demonstrate that Lk signaling between LHLK and LkrPI is required for the expression of starvation-induced wakefulness. ABLK, abdominal ganglion Lk; CNS, central nervous system; LHLK, lateral horn Lk; Lk, leukokinin; Lkr, leukokinin receptor; LkrFB, fan-shaped body projecting Lkr neurons; LkrPI, Lkr-expressing neurons in the pars intercerebralis.
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