Fig 2: Repetitive behaviors and hyperactivity in Mef2c cKO mice.(A) Mef2c cKO mice spend more time jumping than control animals in an operant chamber over a 1-hr interval. (B) Mef2c cKO mice have more fine motor movements in an operant chamber, reflective of stereotypic activity. (C) Latency to fall off an accelerating rotarod is not different in the Mef2c cKO mice. (D) Mef2c cKO mice are hyperactive compared to control littermates. Activity was monitored for 1 hr, and data is plotted by beam breaks/5 min (left) and cumulative beam breaks (right). Data are represented as mean ± SEM. Statistical significance was determined by unpaired t-test (A–D) or 2-way ANOVA (D). **p<0.005, ***p<0.0005, ns=not significant. Numbers of animals (n) are reported in each bar for respective experiment.DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.20059.013

Fig 3: Social behavior abnormalities in Mef2c cKO mice.(A) Representative spectrograms of ultrasonic vocalizations (USVs) recorded from adult male mice in the presence of an estrous female mouse. (B) Adult Mef2c cKO male mice emit fewer USVs to an estrous female than control littermates. (C) Adult Mef2c cKO male mice show different call types than control littermates. Mef2c cKO mice have more unstructured USVs (%) and fewer complex USVs than control mice. Representative images of call types and further breakdown of USV sub-type are presented in Figure 5—figure supplement 1A,B. (D) Juvenile Mef2c cKO mice (pups) emit fewer USVs during maternal separation than control littermates. USVs were recorded on postnatal days (P) 4, 6, and 10. (E) Mef2c cKO mice show reduced preference for interacting with a novel social target. (F) Mef2c cKO mice show normal olfactory response to novel social scent. (G) Mef2c cKO mice fail to build structured nest when utilizing a nest score system (Deacon, 2006). (H) Mef2c cKO mice induce control littermates to withdrawal in the tube test for social dominance in >90% of trials. (I) Mef2c cKO mice show reduced preference for a natural reward, sucrose. Both genotypes showed aversion to the bitter solution, 0.04% quinine. Data are represented as mean ± SEM. Statistical significance was determined by unpaired t-test (B,G,H–I) or 2-way ANOVA with Sidak’s post-hoc comparison (C–F). #p<0.1, *p<0.05, **p<0.005, ***p<0.0005, ns=not significant. Numbers of animals (n) are reported in each bar for respective experiment. Also see Figure 5—figure supplement 1.DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.20059.011

Fig 4: Sleep need induced transcriptomic changes.(A) Schematic of the experimental design illustrating the protocol for frontal cortex brain tissue collection from three sleep conditions at Zeitgeber Time (ZT) = 6 hours: control sleep (CS), sleep deprived (SD) and recovery sleep (RS). Volcano plots showing differentially expressed genes across (B) CS to SD and (C) CS to RS. Significantly differentially expressed genes (DEGs) (adj. p-value<=0.05, absolute log2 fold change >= 0.3), unique to the sleep condition, are indicated as black dots whereas genes shared by SD and RS are indicated as either red (increased expression) or green (decreased expression) dots. (D) Upset plot showing the shared and unique sets of significant DEGs for CS to SD and CS to RS. (E) Dot plot showing enrichment of significant DEGs for cell-types identified using single cell RNA sequencing data (Hrvatin et al., 2018) from mouse cortex, identified Mef2c target genes (Harrington et al., 2016) and rapid primary response genes (rPRGs) (Tyssowski et al., 2018). A Fisher’s exact test was used to calculate the significance of the overlap of the sleep DEGs and the Mef2c-cKOEmx1 DEGs. The size of the dot indicates the odds ratio for enrichment and the color indicates the p-value. Dot plot showing GO analysis for shared significant DEGs with (F) increased and (G) decreased expression across SD and RS compared to CS (for a complete list of significant GO, see Supplementary file 3).

Fig 5: Mef2c+/- mice resolve sleep need in undisturbed conditions but lack a rebound increase of SWS-SWA power in response to sleep loss.(A,B) Average SWA power per 10 s epoch decreases during the sleep phase (ZT = 0 to 12 hr) to the same extent for Mef2c+/+ (n = 6) and Mef2c+/- (n = 6) mice (C). (D) Twenty-four hour average waking SWA power is greater for Mef2c+/- mice. (E) Decay of SWA power (normalized to the average 24 hr waking SWA) during an average SWS episode is preserved in the Mef2c+/- mice but with an increased t, associated with increased sleep need. (F, G) Rebound increased SWS-SWA in response to SD is absent in Mef2c+/- mice. The SD was administered in repeated 6 hr cycles of 4 hr SD and 2 hr RS. (H) A table showing responses of Mef2c-cKOCamk2a-Cre and Mef2c+/- compared to their respective controls (see Figure 5).