Joshua Donnelly

eLife Assessment This important manuscript sets out to identify sleep/arousal phenotypes in larval zebrafish carrying mutations in Alzheimer's disease (AD)-associated genes. The authors provide detailed phenotypic data for F0 knockouts of each of 7 AD-associated genes and then compare the resulting behavioral fingerprints to those obtained from a large-scale chemical screen to generate new hypotheses about underlying molecular mechanisms.

Abstract By exposing genes associated with disease, genomic studies provide hundreds of starting points that should lead to druggable processes. However, our ability to systematically translate these genomic findings into biological pathways remains limited. Here, we combine rapid loss-of-function mutagenesis of Alzheimer's risk genes and behavioural pharmacology in zebrafish to predict disrupted processes and candidate therapeutics.

Abstract Amyloid precursor protein (APP) is a brain-rich, single pass transmembrane protein that is proteolytically processed into multiple products, including Amyloid-beta (Aβ), a major driver of Alzheimer's disease (AD). Although both over-expression of APP, as in mouse models used to study AD, and exogenously delivered Aβ lead to changes in sleep behaviors, whether APP processing plays an endogenous role in regulating sleep is unknown.