Linking Sleep to Immunity by Sehgal and colleagues
Toda, H., Williams, J. A., Gulledge, M., & Sehgal, A. (2019). A sleep-inducing gene, nemuri, links sleep and immune function in Drosophila. Science, 363(6426), 509–515. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aat1650
Have you ever wondered by we sleep more when we catch a bug ? Toda et al., in this groundbreaking study finds that Nemuri is secreted to confer antimicrobial resistance, but at the same time induces long sleep in flies. The authors propose that Nemuri links conditions of increased sleep requirement with enhanced immune function, and provide an intriguing explanation for how sleep deprivation can increase susceptibility to infection. Nemuri is not technically a SEP - it is 172 aa long - but I just wanted to give it a shout-out for how cool it is!