DREADD users blog

Going forward it will be useful to identify the signaling nodes downstream of chemo- and optogenetic perturbations of neuronal circuits.   A nice paper has appeared which characterizes a comprehensive set of kinase inhibitors.

A quite amazing paper has just appeared: Cells of a common developmental origin regulate REM/non-REM sleep and wakefulness in mice Mammalian sleep comprises rapid eye movement (REM) sleep and non-REM (NREM) sleep. To functionally isolate from the complex mixture of neurons populating the brainstem pons those involved in REM/NREM sleep switching, we pharmacogenetically manipulated neurons of a specific embryonic cell lineage in mice. We identified excitatory glutamatergic neurons that inhibit REM sleep and promote NREM sleep. These neurons shared a common developmental origin with neurons promoting wakefulness, both derived from a pool of proneural hindbrain cells expressing Atoh1  at embryonic day 10.5. We also identified inhibitory GABAergic neurons that act downstream to inhibit REM sleep. Artificial reduction or prolongation of REM sleep in turn affected slow wave activity (SWA) during subsequent NREM sleep, implicating REM sleep in the regulation of NREM sleep. Just a note t

Interesting paper here .

Fascinating paper way outside my area of expertise using a variety of techiques to address question of "Twice a day, at dawn and dusk, we experience gradual but very high amplitude changes in background light intensity (irradiance)."

A protocol book devoted to DREADD technology has now appeared  and it looks useful

Paper here