AIM Ciwujia is a traditional herb that has been widely used in China, and also named Acanthopanax senticosus.It is an important Chinese folk medicine for the treatment of insomnia.In this study, the mechanism of Ciwujia on improving sleep in drosophila was studied using the microarray of whole drosophila genome.METHODS The flies models of sleep-deprivation was maked by the alternative light-dark stimulating at night.And then, the effects of Ciwujia on improving sleep of normal flies and flies sleep-derprivation models was determined by using the Drosophila activity monitoring technology.On this basis, the acting mechanism was explored by using the microarray technology of whole drosophila and bioinformatics data analysis techniques.PESULTS Ciwujia can increase sleeping time of the male and female flies significantly at the concentration of 0.125% to 1% , and the sleeping consolidation index was increased; Ciwujia can increase the sleeping time and sleeping consolidation index significantly at the concentration of 0.25%.In flies head Ciwujia can changed expression of 194 genes, night light-dark stimulus can changed expression of 184 genes, the interaction of Ciwujia and night light-dark stimulating can changed expression of 685 genes in flies head.Finally, dco, slo, DopR2 and Nos were screened out as sleep related genes.CONCLUSION Ciwujia can improve the sleep-wake cycle of fruit flies and sleep deprivation model of fruit flies, the mechanism involves co-regulation of multi-gene.