IGERT Fellow Dan Lawler expands his research at MRC, Cambridge, England

IGERT Fellow Dan Lawler spent his summer expanding his research on sleep in C. elegans with Dr. William Schafer at the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology (MRC) at the University of Cambridge England. He began behavioral screens to assess sleep of adult C. elegans containing mutations affecting neuromodulators in C. elegans. This includes the mammalian sleep implicated hormone melatonin, mutants of neuropeptide processing machinery and signaling components, and mutants shown to have altered arousal or developmental quiescence behavior. Mutants which show sleep abnormalities will be further studied to understand changes on the neural level using a behavioral and neural activity screening system developed this summer.