Genetics of Sleep and Sleep Disorders

Dear Colleagues,

Sleep deprivation and sleep disorders (such as obstructive sleep apnea and insomnia) are associated with multiple cardiometabolic diseases, psychiatric disorders, cognition function, and mortality. Research in model organisms has revealed the genetic background of sleep–wake control mechanisms (e.g., suprachiasmatic nucleus, dopaminergic molecules, gamma-aminobutyric acid, hypocretin/orexin), and genes involved in metabolomic and inflammation pathways. However, genomics research on humans still lags behind because of the heterogeneous nature of sleep phenotypes and the challenges related to collecting physiologically meaningful, objective sleep measurements in large datasets. For example, in recent biobanks, only a couple of sleep phenotypes (such as sleep duration and timing) were collected using simple questions. Deep phenotypes characterizing physiological mechanisms (e.g., metrics derived from overnight polysomnography) are crucial in sleep genomics analysis to identify novel genes and pathways and to guide clinical screening and treatment.  

This Special Issue aims to provide a broad and updated overview of the genetics of sleep and sleep disorders, with a particular interest in promoting genomics studies of physiological informative objective phenotypes. Topics of interest include but are not limited to studies of carefully selected and/or deeply phenotyped individuals that provide new hypotheses, and studies that triangulate several sources of information to increase power.

Dr. Heming Wang
Guest Editor

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• sleep
• sleep disorders
• circadian rhythm
• genetics
• genomics analysis
• objective phenotype