Masashi Tabuchi, PhD

My laboratory investigates the molecular and neural coding mechanisms underlying persistent internal drive of sleep, hunger, and neurodegenerative disease using Drosophila and iPS cells as model systems. My research interests stem from my PhD studies at University of Tokyo in Japan and my postdoctoral work with Dr. Mark Wu at the Johns Hopkins University. During my postdoctoral work with Dr. Mark Wu, I first investigated the relationship between sleep loss and neuronal excitability as well as Aß accumulation by using Alzheimer's disease model of Drosophila, and found a causal link between sleep and Alzheimer's disease such that the effects of sleep on Alzheimer's disease pathology and lifespan are mediated by changes in neuronal excitability. I found that sleep loss increased neuronal excitability and Aß accumulation, suggesting that neuronal hyperexcitability is an important mediator of Aß toxicity. I then studied the bidirectional relationship between sleep quality and spike timing temporal coding, which was funded by a NIH K99 Award. In my own lab at Case Western Reserve University, we are currently studying the molecular mechanism underlying sleep deprivation-dependent neuronal hyperexcitability of Drosophila model of Alzheimer's disease as well as human iPSC-derived neuronal cells.