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Krishna Melnattur

@melnattur.bsky.social

830 followers 670 following 42 posts

Asst Prof at Ashoka Univ | ex: Staff Scientist at WUSTL neuroscience | sleep scientist | lover of things that love dew melnatturlab.weebly.com

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Krishna Melnattur @melnattur.bsky.social · Dec 13

We are super excited for this conference on the Neuroscience of Sleep, 11-13 March 2025, at the India Habitat Centre, New Delhi. The program is terrific and the venue lovely, do apply! Re-skeets appreciated! meetings.embo.org/event/25-neu...

Neuroscience of Sleep

Sleep science is at an exciting juncture. The realization that sleep is near universal among animals has revolutionized the field. The ubiquity of sleep extends to the discovery of different sleep st…

meetings.embo.org

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Krishna Melnattur @melnattur.bsky.social · 1d

Just seeing this, looks terrific even to my currently jet-lagged brain, congrats Abhilasha!

Krishna Melnattur @melnattur.bsky.social · 6d

Thanks, Caro! I see you’re going to be at CSHL next week. Will be there too, look fwd!

Krishna Melnattur @melnattur.bsky.social · 6d

Thanks Mark! The mutants have been super helpful, thanks so much ! Re: axenic, yeah a student in Paul Shaw's lab at WashU had tried this experiment some years back when I was there, and didn't see anything for sleep then (in wild type flies).

Krishna Melnattur @melnattur.bsky.social · 7d

More in the preprint – do check it out! Would love feedback. Didn’t think we would be doing classical neurogenetics tbh, but here we are! These genes are cool, lots to mine here (fini)

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Krishna Melnattur @melnattur.bsky.social · 7d

This expt I really like. We used @kayserlab.bsky.social’s sleep restriction protocol to enhance sleep behaviorally and saw improvements in memory! This comes straight from human psychology – cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBTI) amazing that it works in the fly! (12/n)

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Krishna Melnattur @melnattur.bsky.social · 7d

Finally, we asked if the memory defects of some AMP mutants could be reversed by enhancing sleep. We find that enhancing sleep of Bomanin mutants using the GABA agonist Gaboxadol robustly increased sleep and improved memory (11/n)

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Krishna Melnattur @melnattur.bsky.social · 7d

So these ‘immune effectors’ seem to act in glia to modulate sleep and memory. Indeed expression profiling suggests that glial might express many AMPs – cool! (10/n)

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Krishna Melnattur @melnattur.bsky.social · 7d

Group C are doubly mutant for the anti-fungal peptides Metchnikowin (mtk) and Drosomycin (Drs). We knocked down Mtk and Drs in different tissues and saw that glial knockdown mimicked the deletion mutants. (9/n).

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Krishna Melnattur @melnattur.bsky.social · 7d

The Group C mutants seem to be able to carry out (some) sleep functions sans much sleep. Very cool! But how do they do it? We first thought maybe the microbiome is messed up, so we eliminated the microbiome. And saw.. .. crickets (8/n)

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Krishna Melnattur @melnattur.bsky.social · 7d

Sleep in strongly associated with learning and memory. We find that most AMP mutants are impaired in learning and memory using @alexckeene.bsky.social’s gustatory assay. Counter-intuitively Group C mutants that sleep the least uniquely retained normal learning and memory (7/n)

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Krishna Melnattur @melnattur.bsky.social · 7d

We next evaluated sleep functions. As per the synaptic homeostasis hypothesis, extended waking upscales synapses. The Group C mutants that slept the least surprisingly showed lower synapse abundance (6/n)

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Krishna Melnattur @melnattur.bsky.social · 7d

Evaluating baseline sleep is ok, but sleep is also known to be plastic to environmental changes and ecological changes. We find that specific AMPs are required for context dep changes e.g. socialization and rocking induced sleep (5/n)

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Krishna Melnattur @melnattur.bsky.social · 7d

We next evaluated sleep homeostasis reasoning that low sleep might be a result of inability to generate needed sleep. Most mutants were unaffected, Group C mutants that sleep the least uniquely showed an exaggerated rebound. (4/n)

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Krishna Melnattur @melnattur.bsky.social · 7d

AMP mutants sleep less, with a longer latency i.e. they take longer to fall asleep. Sleep regulation by AMPs might be common (3/n)

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Krishna Melnattur @melnattur.bsky.social · 7d

Sleep and immunity are linked. But just how deeply is unclear. Here we obtained mutants in different antimicrobial peptides (AMPs), effectors of fly innate immunity, and characterized their roles in sleep and plasticity (2/n)

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Krishna Melnattur @melnattur.bsky.social · 7d

Happy to share our lab’s first preprint! ‘Mutations in antimicrobial peptides differently affect sleep and plasticity’. Led by @rahulkumar211.bsky.social, with help from many in the lab. In collaboration with @evoimmunoimroze A thread 1/n www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Mutations in antimicrobial peptides differently affect sleep and plasticity

Molecules implicated in host defense can, independent of their roles as immune mediators, regulate sleep. In mammals, cytokines such as Tumor Necrosis Factor α (TNF α) and Interleukin 1β (IL1 β) promo...

www.biorxiv.org

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Reposted by Krishna Melnattur

André Nadler @nadlerlab.bsky.social · Aug 21

Out today in @nature.com: Together with the Honigmann, Shevchenko, Drobot and Hof labs, we present a general workflow for imaging the localization and transport of individual lipids in cells and mapping their metabolism.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

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Reposted by Krishna Melnattur

Omer Sharon @omersharon.bsky.social · Aug 23

Fresh results now in bioRxiv! 🎉 We know about the function of NREM sleep for overnight memory consolidation. But what about REM sleep? We found that in aging, slow delta waves can intrude phasic REM periods, and this, is associated with worse overnight consolidation 🧠 (1/5) doi.org/10.1101/2025...

REM Sleep Misfires: Intruding Delta Waves Forecast Tau, Amyloid, and Forgetting in Aging

Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep degrades with age, and more severely in Alzheimer's disease (AD). REM sleep comprises about twenty percent of adult sleep, alternates between phasic and tonic periods, a...

doi.org

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Reposted by Krishna Melnattur

Abhilasha Joshi, PhD @rhythmicspikes.bsky.social · Aug 25

We are still accepting applications for the #postdoc opportunity in the lab 🕵‍♀️ 🧠

More details 👇
Postdoctoral position: lnkd.in/g4TkRxpM
Research directions: lnkd.in/eV2iMKGf
Our team and philosophy: lnkd.in/eh3nnNgq

⏬

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Reposted by Krishna Melnattur

Ida Momennejad @neuroai.bsky.social · Aug 18

"The aim of science is not to open the door to infinite wisdom but to set a limit to infinite error.”

- Bertolt Brecht
The Life of Galileo

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Reposted by Krishna Melnattur

Piali Sengupta @senguptalab.bsky.social · Aug 15

More new science from the lab! Led by @nathancsharris.bsky.social (now at GA State) and PD Priya Dutta.

We describe how experience tunes the ratios of functional receptors in a single sensory neuron via coordinating transcriptional and post-transcriptional mechanisms to drive response plasticity.

bioRxiv Neuroscience @biorxiv-neursci.bsky.social · Aug 14

Experience-dependent reconfiguration of receptors at a sensory compartment regulates neuronal plasticity https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.08.13.670147v1

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Krishna Melnattur @melnattur.bsky.social · Aug 12

So sorry to see this Sian

Krishna Melnattur @melnattur.bsky.social · Aug 1

Thanks for making it out, Anya! We loved hosting, it was a fun meeting!

Krishna Melnattur @melnattur.bsky.social · Jul 30

This effort to write up the Meeting Review was led entirely by PhD students! Couldn’t be happier for you all! Hope you all go on to great things!
@rahulkumar211.bsky.social @ritikamukherji.bsky.social
Kamakshi Singh
@embo.org @biologists.bsky.social

Krishna Melnattur @melnattur.bsky.social · Jul 30

Happy to share a wonderful Meeting Review of our @sleepneuroscience.bsky.social
meeting in March! #EMBONeuroSleep

shorturl.at/bFxPl

Reflections on the EMBO Workshop: Neuroscience of Sleep 2025

Summary: The inaugural EMBO workshop on the neuroscience of sleep brought together a global sleep research community to discuss recent advances across species, scales and systems. The meeting explored...

shorturl.at

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