Munoz-Lobato, Fernando et al. (2021) International Worm Meeting "Sleep is required for odor exposure to consolidate memory and remodel olfactory synapses."

Miller, Julia, Churgin, Matthew, Bremer, Martina, Chang, Eric, Varshney, Aruna, Nordquist, Sarah, Tran, Alan, Bokka, Anirudh, Tsujimoto, Bryan, Jimenez, Vanessa, VanHoven, Miri, L'Etoile, Noelle, Chandra, Rashmi, Brueggemann, Chantal, Baradwaj, Anjana, Andersen, Kristine, Kato, Saul, Saifuddin, Fatema, Fang-Yen, Chris, Benedetti, Kelli, Li, Joy, Dunn, Raymond, Farah, Fatima, Munoz-Lobato, Fernando, Duong, Alex

[International Worm Meeting, 2021]

Sleep is not only an essential function of humans but remains conserved across metazoans. Here we demonstrate that wild-type C. elegans sleep after repeated odor trainings This provides us with a platform to dissect how sleep affects memory at a synaptic resolution. We identified that sleep immediately after training is required for the animal to retain a long-term memory of the odor. We found that if animals do not sleep in the first two hours after training, memory is not consolidated. After identifying the neurons that are required for the memory, we show that the sensory-interneuron connections within the circuit are downscaled after sleep. Therefore, we found a time-specific requirement of sleep that modulates synaptic downscaling to preserve memory. Conversely, lack of sleep post-training erases the long-term memory and destabilizes the synaptic downscaling, indicating that modulating the amount of sleep is sufficient to modulate memory. These results make C. elegans an excellent tool to ask what molecular mechanisms, cell biological processes and circuit level reorganizations are engaged during sleep to promote memory. This understanding will provide insights into the functions of sleep that contributes to our health and well-being.