The Genetics of Sleep in Zebrafish

Danio rerio (zebrafish) has become a popular model for assaying a variety of conserved behaviors and traits. As a simple vertebrate, zebrafish provide insight into development of skeletal and nervous system processes in a small, transparent system that is easily observable. They have become a useful model for studying neural development, effects of drugs, and even behaviors once thought to be uniquely mammalian, including sleep. Over the last decade, advanced techniques for molecular imaging and automated behavioral acquisition have allowed researchers to identify rest states in the zebrafish that highly resemble mammalian sleep, which has provided an excellent and simple model system for examining sleep-wake behaviors in a tractable vertebrate. This chapter will describe how the use of zebrafish as a model organism is contributing to the rapidly progressing field of sleep research.