Sleep is an evolutionarily conserved behavior that is increasingly recognized as important for human health. While its precise function remains controversial, sleep has been suggested to play a key role in a variety of biological phenomena ranging from synaptic plasticity to metabolic clearance. Although it is clear that sleep is regulated by the circadian clock, how this occurs remains enigmatic. Here we examine the genetic mechanisms by which the circadian clock regulates sleep, drawing on recent work in fruit flies, zebrafish, mice, and humans. These studies reveal that central and local clocks utilize diverse mechanisms to regulate different aspects of sleep, and a better understanding of this multilayered regulation may lead to a better understanding of the functions of sleep.

睡眠是一种进化上保守的行为，人们日益认为它对人类健康至关重要。尽管其确切功能仍存在争议，但已建议睡眠在从突触可塑性到代谢清除等多种生物学现象中起关键作用。尽管很明显睡眠是由昼夜节律调节的，但如何发生仍然是个谜。在这里，我们利用果蝇，斑马鱼，小鼠和人类的最新研究，研究了生物钟调节睡眠的遗传机制。这些研究表明，中央和本地时钟利用多种机制来调节睡眠的不同方面，并且对这种多层调节的更好理解可能会导致对睡眠功能的更好理解。