A Global Transcriptional Atlas of the Effect of Sleep Deprivation in the Mouse Frontal Cortex

Abstract

Sleep deprivation (SD) has negative effects on brain function. Sleep problems are prevalent in neurodevelopmental, neurodegenerative and psychiatric disorders. Thus, understanding the molecular consequences of SD is of fundamental importance in neuroscience. In this study, we present the first simultaneous bulk and single-nuclear (sn)RNA sequencing characterization of the effects of SD in the mouse frontal cortex. We show that SD predominantly affects glutamatergic neurons, specifically in layers 4 and 5, and produces isoform switching of thousands of transcripts. At both the global and cell-type specific level, SD has a large repressive effect on transcription, down-regulating thousands of genes and transcripts; underscoring the importance of accounting for the effects of sleep loss in transcriptome studies of brain function. As a resource we provide extensive characterizations of cell types, genes, transcripts and pathways affected by SD; as well as tutorials for data analysis.