Sheetal Potdar

Scientific Research

List of publications from my academic research projects.

PhD research

I studied neural circuits modulating sleep/wake cycles in Drosophila, which formed the basis of my PhD research:

  1. Potdar S, Sheeba V (2018). Wakefulness is promoted during day time by PDFR signaling to dopaminergic neurons in Drosophila melanogaster. eNeuro, DOI.

2. Potdar S, Daniel DK, Thomas FA, Lall S and Sheeba V (2018). Sleep deprivation negatively impacts reproductive output in Drosophila melanogaster. Journal of Experimental Biology, DOI.

  • One of my favorite papers, primarily conducted by undergraduate students. Here we show that sleep deprivation decreases egg output in female fruit flies.

Masters’ Research projects

My academic journey began with interest in animal behavior and neuroscience, and during my MS at JNCASR, I worked on a variety of projects:

3. Gray TNE*, Vidya TNC*, Potdar S, Bharti DK and Sovanna P (2014). Population size estimation of an Asian elephant population in eastern Cambodia through non-invasive mark-recapture sampling. Conservative Genetics, DOI. *Joint first and corresponding authors.

  • This paper is a result of a rotation project, where I genotyped Asian elephants and estimated their population size, which is important information for conservation measures.

4. Potdar S, Sheeba V (2013). Lessons from sleeping flies: insights from Drosophila melanogaster on the neuronal circuitry and importance of sleep. Journal of Neurogenetics, DOI.

  • This is a review on neural circuits regulating sleep, and formed the basis of my PhD project.

5. Potdar S, Sheeba V (2012). Large ventral lateral neurons determine the phase of evening activity peak across photoperiods in Drosophila melanogaster. Journal of Biological Rhythms, DOI.

  • This paper is based on my MS thesis, and talks about how different subsets of circadian clock neurons regulate different features of circadian behavior.

Collaborative work

6. Singh VJ, Potdar S, Sheeba V (2022). Effects of Food Availability Cycles on Phase and Period of Activity-rest Rhythm in Drosophila melanogaster. Journal of Biological Rhythms, DOI.

  • This work is based on my colleague’s PhD work, and here is a short video summarizing this work, which we had a lot of fun working on.

7. Lone SR, Potdar S, Venkataraman A, Sharma N, Kulkarni R, Rao S, Mishra S, Sheeba V and Sharma VK (2021). Mechanosensory stimulation via Nanchung expressing neurons can induce daytime sleep in Drosophila. The Journal of Neuroscience, DOI.

  • This work shows that rocking motion induces sleep in Drosophila, just like in humans!

8. Lone SR, Potdar S, Srivastava M and Sharma VK (2016). Social experience is sufficient to modulate sleep need of Drosophila without increasing wakefulness. Plos One, DOI.

9. Lone SR, Venkataraman A, Srivastava M, Potdar S and Sharma VK (2015). Or47b neurons promote male mating success in Drosophila. Biology Letters, DOI.

If you have any issues accessing either of these papers, please get in touch.