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Keeping the daily clock ticking in a fluctuating environment: Hints from a green alga

2010-11-12
(Press-News.org) Researchers in France have uncovered a mechanism which explains how biological clocks accurately synchronize to the day/night cycle despite large fluctuations in light intensity during the day and from day to day. Following the identification of two central "clock genes" of a green alga, Ostreococcus tauri, a mathematical model reproducing their daily activity profiles has revealed that their internal clock is influenced by the naturally varying light levels throughout the day only at periods when it needs resetting. The results found by the biologists at Oceanologic Observatory of Université Paris 6 in Banyuls, France, physicists at Université Lille 1, France, together with the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, are published November 11 in the open-access journal PLoS Computational Biology,

Circadian clocks keep track of time in many living organisms, allowing them to anticipate environmental changes induced by day/night alternation. They consist of networks of genes and proteins which interact to generate biochemical oscillations with a period close to 24 hours. Exact synchronization to the day/night cycle requires that some clock components sense daylight. Ostreococcus has evolved a simple but effective strategy to shield the circadian clock from interference caused by fluctuations in the levels of daylight by limiting sensitivity to light to specific times of day. In the authors' model, as in experiments, this ability is furthermore inactivated when the clock is in phase with the day/night cycle but resets the clock when it is out of phase. Such a clock architecture is immune to strong daylight fluctuation such as due to cloud cover.

Light sensing is assumed to be activated only when the core oscillator controlling the biological clock is blind to perturbations and variations. As anyone who has pushed a swing knows, the response of a periodic motion to a perturbation depends indeed very much on the timing; pushing a swing mid-arc doesn't achieve much. With this simple trick, the clock is insensitive to light and its fluctuations when it is on time. However, if the clock becomes out of phase, it will be subjected to light at a different time of its cycle, and respond to the perturbation so as to be reset to the correct time.

INFORMATION: Funding: This work has been supported by ANR grant 07BSYS004 to F.-Y.B. and M.L., by CNRS interdisciplinary programme "Interface Physique, Biologie et Chimie : soutien à la prise de risque" to M.L., as well as by Ministry of Higher Education and Research, Nord-Pas de Calais Regional Council and FEDER through the Contrat de Projets État-Région (CPER) 2007-2013. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Citation: Thommen Q, Pfeuty B, Morant P-E, Corellou F, Bouget F-Y, et al. (2010) Robustness of Circadian Clocks to Daylight Fluctuations: Hints from the Picoeucaryote Ostreococcus tauri. PLoS Comput Biol 6(11): e1000990. doi:10.1371/journal.pcbi.1000990

PLEASE ADD THIS LINK TO THE PUBLISHED ARTICLE IN ONLINE VERSIONS OF YOUR REPORT: http://www.ploscompbiol.org/doi/pcbi.1000990 (link will go live on Thursday)

PRESS-ONLY PREVIEW OF THE ARTICLE: http://www.plos.org/press/plcb-06-11-Lefranc.pdf

Everything published by PLoS Computational Biology is open access, allowing anyone to download, reuse, reprint, modify, distribute, and/or copy articles, so long as the original authors and source are cited. Please mention PLoS Computational Biology in your report and use the link(s) below to take readers straight to the online articles. Thank you.

About PLoS Computational Biology

PLoS Computational Biology (www.ploscompbiol.org) features works of exceptional significance that further our understanding of living systems at all scales through the application of computational methods. All works published in PLoS Computational Biology are open access. Everything is immediately available subject only to the condition that the original authorship and source are properly attributed. Copyright is retained.


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[Press-News.org] Keeping the daily clock ticking in a fluctuating environment: Hints from a green alga