1Uninterrupted arousal is important for survival during threatening situations. Activation of 2 orexin/hypocretin neurons is implicated in sustained arousal. However, orexin neurons 3 produce and release orexin as well as several co-transmitters including dynorphin and 4 glutamate. Thus, it is important to disambiguate orexin peptide-dependent and 5 -independent physiological functions of orexin neurons. To attain this, we generated a 6 novel orexin-flippase (Flp) knock-in (KI) mouse line. Crossing with Flp-reporter or 7 Cre-expressing mice showed gene expression exclusively in orexin neurons.
8Histological studies confirmed that orexin was completely knock-out (KO) in KI/KI 9 homozygous mice. Orexin neurons without orexin showed altered electrophysiological 10 properties, as well as received decreased glutamatergic inputs. Selective chemogenetic 11 activation revealed that both orexin and co-transmitters functioned to increase 12 wakefulness, however, orexin was indispensable to promote sustained arousal.13 Surprisingly, activation of orexin neurons without orexin caused a significant increase in 14 the total time spent in cataplexy. Taken together, orexin is essential to maintain basic 15 membrane properties and input-output computation of orexin neurons, as well as to exert 16 awake-sustaining aptitude of orexin neurons. 17 18 19 sleep/wakefulness, cataplexy 20 23 2011; Tsunematsu et al., 2011). In addition to these, employing transgenic mice, we 24 reported that chemogenetic activation of orexin neurons increased locomotion, feeding 25 behavior and metabolism (Inutsuka et al., 2014). Thus, orexin neurons are thought to 26 4 interact with the neuroregulatory, autonomic and neuroendocrine systems, and perform 1 critical roles in the regulation of sleep/wakefulness and energy homeostasis.2 The physiological activity of orexin neurons is modulated by multiple neural 3 inputs and humoral factors. These inputs include GABAergic neurons in the preoptic 4 area, serotonergic neurons in the dorsal and median raphe nuclei, central amygdala, 5 basal forebrain cholinergic neurons, the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis, 6 supraventricular zone, and the dorsomedial, lateral and posterior hypothalamus (Sakurai 7 et al., 2005; Yoshida et al., 2006). Recently, we reported that serotonergic neurons in the 8 raphe nucleus inhibit orexin neurons both directly and indirectly (Chowdhury and 9 Yamanaka, 2016). Orexin neurons are also found to respond to multiple humoral factors 10 and neuropeptides (Inutsuka and Yamanaka, 2013; Sakurai, 2014). Most interestingly, 11 orexin neurons form a positive-feedback circuitry among themselves in the LHA by 12 activating other orexin neurons through OX2R to maintain the wake-active network at 13 optimum level and/or for a sustained period (Yamanaka et al., 2010a).14 However, orexin neurons contain other neurotransmitters including glutamate 15 (Rosin et al., 2003), dynorphin (Chou et al., 2001) and galanin (Hakansson et al., 1999).
16Therefore, to better understand the physiology and pathophy...