RT Journal Article SR Electronic T1 Immune stimulation reduces sleep and memory ability in Drosophila melanogaster JF bioRxiv FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory SP 002717 DO 10.1101/002717 A1 E. B. Mallon A1 A. Alghamdi A1 R. T. K. Holdbrook A1 E. Rosato YR 2014 UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2014/03/12/002717.abstract AB Psychoneuroimmunology studies the increasing number of connections between neurobiology, immunology and behaviour. We establish Drosophila melanogaster as a tractable model in this field by demonstrating the effects of the immune response on two fundamental behaviours: sleep and memory ability.We used the Geneswitch system to upregulate peptidoglycan receptor protein (PGRP) expression, thereby stimulating the immune system in the absence of infection. Geneswitch was activated by feeding the steroid RU486, to the flies. We used an aversive classical conditioning paradigm to quantify memory and measures of activity to infer sleep.Immune stimulated flies exhibited reduced levels of sleep, which could not be explained by a generalised increase in waking activity. The effects on sleep were more pronounced for day compared to night sleep. Immune stimulated flies also showed a reduction in memory abilities.These are important results as they establish Drosophila as a model for immune-neural interactions and provide a possible role for sleep in the interplay between the immune response and memory.