University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations 2012 Regulation of Drosophila Rest: Activity Rhythms by a Microrna and Aging Wenyu Luo University of Pennsylvania,
[email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations Part of the Family, Life Course, and Society Commons, Genetics Commons, and the Neuroscience and Neurobiology Commons Recommended Citation Luo, Wenyu, "Regulation of Drosophila Rest: Activity Rhythms by a Microrna and Aging" (2012). Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations. 540. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/540 This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/540 For more information, please contact
[email protected]. Regulation of Drosophila Rest: Activity Rhythms by a Microrna and Aging Abstract Although there has been much progress in deciphering the molecular basis of the circadian clock, major questions remain about clock mechanisms and about the control of behavior and physiology by the clock. In particular, mechanisms that transmit time-of-day signals from the clock and produce rhythmic behaviors are poorly understood. Also, it is not known why rest:activity rhythms break down with age. In this thesis, we used a Drosophila model to address some of these questions. We identified a pathway that is required downstream of the clock for rhythmic rest:activity and also explored the mechanisms that account for deterioration of behavioral rhythms with age. By investigating candidate circadian mutants identified in a previous genetic screen in the laboratory, we discovered a circadian function of a microRNA gene, miR-279. We found that miR-279 acts through the JAK/STAT pathway to drive rest:activity rhythms.