Drosophila pan-glial inducible Gal4 line alters baseline sleep

The GeneSwitch system (GS) is a genetic reagent for pharmacologically inducible gene expression in Drosophila using the Gal4-UAS binary expression system. We have identified that the pan-glial repo -GS-Gal4 line uniquely causes significant baseline sleep reduction during both day and night in the presence of the inducing agent RU-486 even in the absence of effector transgene expression. Careful experimental design to permit detection of small sleep changes that may be obscured by the large sleep reduction in the presence of RU-486 is required when using the repo -GS-Gal4 line for behavioral studies.