Mathematical Modeling of Sleep and Wake in \u3ci\u3eDrosophila Melanogaster\u3c/i\u3e

The regulation of how and why we fall asleep and wake up are not yet understood. We used mathematical modeling of sleep to uncover underlying patterns that may help to understand how and why sleep transitions occur in normal flies. We recorded activity from male and female wild-type flies and circadian rhythm mutants, cycle (cyc01). Flies were allowed to adapt to constant darkness (DD) for two days and activity was recorded for four days. After sleep and wake was determined, we applied exponential and linear models to determine the relationships between prior bouts to the current bout lengths. We found that exponential models better described this relationship compared to linear models. Importantly, we determined that a fly’s bout duration data needed to be standardized by its own average bout length to correct for individual differences in bout length. Our initial results suggest a more complicated relationship between sleep and wake bouts