Research
Genetic, molecular, and neural underpinnings of sleep and sleep deprivation
Appointments
- Associate Professor; Department of Integrative Biology and Physiology
Biography
Dr. Paul studies the genetic, molecular, and neural underpinnings of sleep. His primary interests are comprised of uncovering the mechanisms responsible for the negative effects of sleep deprivation in adults and children. He also probes the origins of gender/sex differences in the ability to recover from sleep loss to develop therapeutic targets for sleep disorders that disproportionately affect females.
His work has shown that sex differences in daily sleep amount are dependent on circulating reproductive hormones while sex differences in the ability to recover from sleep loss are relatively insensitive to them. Dr. Paul’s current research involves applying a forward genetics approach to uncover the core genes responsible for sleep-wake regulation and the impairing effects of sleep loss. Effective treatments for common sleep-wake disorders are elusive.
Dr. Paul conducts a forward genetics approach to facilitate gene identification that takes advantage of natural variation occurring in sleep-replete and sleep-deprived mice. This approach applies the most cutting edge genome mapping, positional cloning, and DNA sequencing techniques to identifying the genetic origins of unique sleep phenotypes in transgenic mouse models. These studies are expected to identify novel sleep regulatory genes and lead to the development of new therapeutic targets and improved treatments for sleep disorders.
Publications
- Paul, K, Raman K, V, Baaniya, M, Jadhav, I, Bhattacharjee, S, Tilgam, J et al.. A novel recombinant CRISPR/Cas9 vector system for genome editing in plants. Transgenic Res. 2025;34 (1):45. doi: 10.1007/s11248-025-00465-6. PubMed PMID:41062879 .
- Abac, AG, Abouelfettouh, I, Acernese, F, Ackley, K, Adamcewicz, C, Adhicary, S et al.. GW250114: Testing Hawking's Area Law and the Kerr Nature of Black Holes. Phys Rev Lett. 2025;135 (11):111403. doi: 10.1103/kw5g-d732. PubMed PMID:41004747 .
- Christoph, T, Yulia, I, Paul, K, Gero, S, Michaela, P, Oliver, H et al.. Kinetics of adrenomedullin pathway activation in a porcine sepsis model and a human cohort of sepsis and septic shock. Sci Rep. 2025;15 (1):32693. doi: 10.1038/s41598-025-19278-y. PubMed PMID:40993326 PubMed Central PMC12460767.
- Paul, KC, Molitor, J, Yu, Y, Batteate, C, Stafoggia, M, Mitra, S et al.. Investigating the Aliso Canyon gas blowout disaster and adverse birth outcomes: A quasiexperimental approach. Sci Adv. 2025;11 (37):eadr6684. doi: 10.1126/sciadv.adr6684. PubMed PMID:40938976 PubMed Central PMC12428921.
- Short, CA, Hildebrandt, A, Bosse, R, Debener, S, Özyağcılar, M, Paul, K et al.. Lost in a large EEG multiverse? Comparing sampling approaches for representative pipeline selection. J Neurosci Methods. 2025;424 :110564. doi: 10.1016/j.jneumeth.2025.110564. PubMed PMID:40934977 .