Lucia Peixoto: Sleep and Transcriptional Regulation in Neurotypical Development and Autism.

Dr. Peixoto is a tenured Associate Professor in the Department of Translational Medicine and Physiology at Washington State University's Elson S. Floyd College of Medicine (ESFCOM), where she also serves as a core faculty member of the Sleep and Performance Research Center.

Her research focuses on the relationship between sleep, brain development, and transcriptional regulation; in both neurotypical development and in neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism. She is internationally recognized for her work using animal models to understand sleep and autism connections. Dr. Peixoto's independent research has earned numerous accolades, including a K01 Faculty Development Award and a Maximizing Investigator's Research Award (MIRA) from the National Institutes of Health, a pilot award from the Simons Foundation Autism Research Initiative (SFARI), the "Outstanding Contributions”  award to the International Society of Computational Biology (ISCB), and both the "Outstanding Contributions to Research" and "Honoring Mentorship/Sponsorship" awards from the WSU College of Medicine. She has served on the board of directors of ISCB and has been named a fellow of ISCB in 2025.

Short abstract 

Sleep problems affect up to 93% of individuals with autism and can be detected before diagnosis, yet the underlying molecular mechanisms remain poorly understood. Using the Shank3ΔC mouse model of autism Dr. Peixoto’s team has shown that an abnormal sleep homeostatic response is at least in part the culprit. Sleep homeostasis refers to the body's natural drive to maintain balanced sleep by building up "sleep pressure" during wakefulness and relieving it through sleep. It's one of the two fundamental processes, together with circadian rhythms, that regulate our sleep-wake cycle. The molecular basis of sleep homeostasis, however, remains a mystery.

In this talk Dr. Peixoto will discuss her team’s efforts to understand the molecular basis of sleep homeostasis, and how it may be altered in in autism, using transcriptomic approaches. Her findings show that in neurotypical brains, acute sleep deprivation triggers massive transcriptional changes, with excitatory neurons showing the strongest response. Cellular redox homeostasis, DNA damage/repair and chromatin regulation are among the pathways that show the most pronounced sleep-pressure dependent transcriptional regulation. In the Shank3ΔC autism model, this normal response is heavily repressed starting as early as post-weaning, suggesting that autism-associated genetic mutations fundamentally alter how different brain cell types may respond to sleep pressure at the molecular level from very young ages.

The host of this speaker is Prof. Ana Pombo. 

You are all cordially invited to attend her talk in person or via zoom:

Meeting-ID: 681 8753 2149

Pass code:   742 990

For 1 to 1 meeting with Prof. Lucia Peixoto, please contact  olga.poethke@mdc-berlin.de