Major grant for the effects of a misregulated biological clock on sleep

The Human Frontiers Science Program (HFSP) has awarded an international research team led by Dr. Robbert Havekes of the Groningen Institute for Evolutionary Life Sciences, a total of $1,350,000 for a period of three years. Their application on the role of the biological clock in the effects of sleep deprivation was ranked fourth out of the nine awarded; in total, 215 applied for a grant. The international team also includes Prof. Dr. Matias Zurbriggen (University of Düsseldorf, Germany), Dr. Sara Aton (University of Michigan, United States), and Dr. Jae Kim (Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, South Korea).

They will determine whether memory and synaptic plasticity phenotypes associated with not getting enough sleep are caused by misregulation of the molecular clock. These studies will provide novel fundamental insight into the functional consequences of clock gene regulation by sleep and wake, and will be the first-ever test to determine how sleep-dependent transcriptional changes affect brain function.