Pleiotropic effects of a high confidence Autism Spectrum Disorder gene, arid1b, on zebrafish sleep

• Published in: Neurobiology of sleep and circadian rhythms Vol. 14; p. 100096
• Main Authors: Doldur-Balli, Fusun, Zimmerman, Amber J., Keenan, Brendan T., Shetty, Zoe Y., Grant, Struan F.A., Seiler, Christoph, Veatch, Olivia J., Pack, Allan I.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States Elsevier Inc 01.05.2023; Elsevier
• Subjects: arid1b; Autism spectrum disorder; Neurodevelopment; Pleiotropy; Research Paper; Sleep; Social preference; arid1b; Social preference; Neurodevelopment; Pleiotropy; Sleep; Autism spectrum disorder
• ISSN: 2451-9944; 2451-9944
• DOI: 10.1016/j.nbscr.2023.100096

Sleep fulfills critical functions in neurodevelopment, such as promoting synaptic plasticity, neuronal wiring, and brain connectivity which are critical phenomena in Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) pathophysiology. Sleep disturbance, specifically insomnia, accompanies ASD and is associated with more severe core symptoms (e.g., social impairment). It is possible that focusing on identifying effective ways to treat sleep problems can help alleviate other ASD-related symptoms. A body of evidence indicates shared mechanisms and neurobiological substrates between sleep and ASD and investigation of these may inform therapeutic effects of improving sleep at both behavioral and molecular levels. In this study, we tested if sleep and social behavior were different in a zebrafish model with the arid1b gene mutated compared to controls. This gene was selected for study as expert curations conducted for the Simons Foundation for Autism Research Institute (SFARI) Gene database define it is as a ‘high confidence’ ASD gene (i.e., clearly implicated) encoding a chromatin remodeling protein. Homozygous arid1b mutants displayed increased arousability and light sleep compared to their heterozygous and wild type counterparts, based on testing a mechano-acoustic stimulus presenting different vibration frequencies of increasing intensity to detect sleep depth. In addition, decreased social preference was observed in arid1b heterozygous and homozygous mutant zebrafish. The behavioral phenotypes reported in our study are in line with findings from mouse models and human studies and demonstrate the utility of zebrafish as a vertebrate model system with high throughput phenotyping in the investigation of changes in sleep in models relevant to ASD. Furthermore, we demonstrate the importance of including assessments of arousal threshold when studying sleep using in vivo models. [Display omitted] •An Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) risk gene, arid1b has pleiotropic effects on sleep. arid1b mutants had lighter sleep.•Effects on social preference were observed in both heterozygous and homozygous loss of function mutants.•Sleep depth was only altered in homozygous loss of function.•Measuring sleep depth using arousal threshold assays is a crucial sleep phenotype to evaluate in ASD models.