GIGEM (Group Isolation Gauge Effect Metrics), A Software Suite for Analyzing Social Isolation-Induced Sleep Loss and Multi-Batch Experiments in Drosophila

Abstract

We introduce Group Isolation Gauge Effect Metrics (GIGEM), a high-throughput software suite for Drosophila sleep analysis designed to manage large population datasets from multi-batch experiments. In this study, we characterized social isolation-induced sleep phenotypes across 38 Sleep Inbred Panel (SIP) lines after both acute and chronic social isolation. Beyond this specific study, GIGEM is broadly suited for diverse Drosophila sleep research involving large-scale and multi-batch datasets. GIGEM enabled an extensive analysis of sleep parameters and allowed systematic identification of sleep changes in response to social isolation. Following acute social isolation, SIP line animals showed heterogeneous responses, including sleep loss, sleep gain, and no change in sleep. In contrast, chronic social isolation led to significant sleep loss in nearly all lines, though to varying degrees. While most SIP lines were sensitive to chronic social isolation, a select few were resistant to it. These results were obtained across 38 SIP lines and wild-type controls (totaling 5670 animals). Collectively, our results demonstrate that chronic social isolation-induced sleep loss is a robust yet variable trait and establish GIGEM as a powerful, generalizable tool for Drosophila sleep phenotyping in large-scale, multi-batch studies.