Congratulations to Cecilia Velasco, a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Miesenböck group who has just received a Wellcome Early-Career Award. This award will fund research aimed to explore how mitochondria and the endoplasmic reticulum control homeostatic sleep.
This award will fund research aimed to explore how mitochondria and the endoplasmic reticulum control homeostatic sleep. Thanks to the homeostatic system, our need to sleep accumulates during wakefulness and dissipates with sleep. The amplitude of slow-wave oscillations during non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep in mammals is correlated with sleep pressure, fostering hypothesis about the role of these oscillations in the restorative functions of sleep. Despite the relevance of slow-wave oscillations in health and in disease, the mechanisms underpinning their generation and regulation remain poorly understood. In the fruit fly, sleep need is also represented by the amplitude of slow oscillations, which occur in a small population of sleep-control neurons.
While participating in a study recently published in Nature, Dr. Velasco noticed that genetic manipulations promoting mitochondrial fusion and the contact sites between mitochondria and the endoplasmic reticulum, increase neuronal excitability and the presence of slow oscillations in sleep-control neurons. Dr Velasco comments: ‘my research proposal emerges from this key observation’.
Using the fruit fly as a model organism, the goal of Dr. Velasco’s research is to unravel the fundamental mechanisms underlying slow oscillations by focusing on the role of mitochondria and the endoplasmic reticulum in determining the calcium buffering capacity of the cell, and consequently neuronal activity.
Findings from this research will potentially uncover the link between slow-wave oscillations and the cellular restorative functions of sleep and clarify their health implications.
The Wellcome Early-Career Award will help Dr. Velasco develop her research identity and intellectual independence by providing her the opportunity to lead her own project. Winning this Award, and the recognition that comes with it, will propel Dr. Velasco to an independent research career.