Circadian rhythms articles within Nature

Featured

  • Letter |

    Circadian rhythms in the intracellular concentration of magnesium ions act as a cell-autonomous timekeeping component to determine key clock properties and tune cellular metabolism both in a human cell line and in a unicellular alga.

    • Kevin A. Feeney
    • , Louise L. Hansen
    •  & Gerben van Ooijen

  • Letter |

    The frq gene, essential for circadian clock function, is shown to differ from most other genes in Neurospora by exhibiting non-optimal codon usage; by contrast, optimization of codon usage is unexpectedly found to affect the structure and function of the coded protein, subsequently impairing circadian feedback loops.

    • Mian Zhou
    • , Jinhu Guo
    •  & Yi Liu

  • Article |

    Daily oxidation–reduction cycles of peroxiredoxin proteins are shown to be conserved in all domains of life, including Bacteria, Archaea and Eukaryota.

    • Rachel S. Edgar
    • , Edward W. Green
    •  & Akhilesh B. Reddy

  • News & Views |

    A biological clock synchronizes animal behaviour and physiology with Earth's 24-hour rotation. Drugs targeting the clock's 'gears' show promise for treating obesity and other metabolic disorders. See Article p.62 & Letter p.123

    • Joseph Bass

  • Letter |

    Circadian rhythmicity of cardiac ion-channel expression and of an index of myocardial repolarization is under the control of Klf15, a clock-dependent oscillator that is required for generating transient outward potassium current, and deficiencies or excesses of which cause loss of rhythmic variation in myocardial and abnormal repolarization, and an enhanced susceptibility to ventricular arrhythmias.

    • Darwin Jeyaraj
    • , Saptarsi M. Haldar
    •  & Mukesh K. Jain

  • News & Views |

    The molecular clock machinery regulates organisms' responses to daily variations in the environment. One unexpected response seems to be temporal fine-tuning of stem-cell behaviour in the skin. See Article p.209

    • Lorena Aguilar-Arnal
    •  & Paolo Sassone-Corsi

  • Article |

    The circadian clock fine-tunes the activation state of epidermal stem cells by regulating their ability to respond to their microenvironment; perturbation of this clock affects long-term tissue homeostasis and predisposition to tumorigenesis.

    • Peggy Janich
    • , Gloria Pascual
    •  & Salvador Aznar Benitah

  • News & Views |

    Oscillations in gene transcription that occur in response to biological daily clocks coordinate the physiological workings of living organisms. But turnover in cellular energy may be sufficient to make the clock tick. See Article p.498 & Letter p.554

    • Joseph Bass
    •  & Joseph S. Takahashi

  • Letter |

    Circadian clocks are critical timing regulators of physiology and behaviour that are ubiquitous in eukaryotes. Most mechanistic models of the this clock are based on transcription cycles, but some evidence for post-translational regulation has recently surfaced in plants and cyanobacteria. This is one of two groups demonstrating a role for the oxidation of peroxiredoxin proteins in maintaining an entrainable oscillation in human red blood cells and a unicellular alga. These data indicate a role for non-transcriptional mechanisms in clock models and open the door to future work exploring the connections between the transcriptional and non transcriptional circadian machinery.

    • John S. O’Neill
    • , Gerben van Ooijen
    •  & Andrew J. Millar

  • Article |

    Circadian clocks are critical timing regulators of physiology and behaviour that are ubiquitous in eukaryotes. Most mechanistic models of the this clock are based on transcription cycles, but some evidence for post-translational regulation has recently surfaced in plants and cyanobacteria. This is one of two groups demonstrating a role for the oxidation of peroxiredoxin proteins in maintaining an entrainable oscillation in human red blood cells and a unicellular alga. These data indicate a role for non-transcriptional mechanisms in clock models and open the door to future work exploring the connections between the transcriptional and non-transcriptional circadian machinery.

    • John S. O’Neill
    •  & Akhilesh B. Reddy

  • Letter |

    Various biological processes are entrained by the day–night cycle to occur at a specific time of day. One way the circadian system exerts these effects is through post-transcriptional regulation. These authors show that a protein that transfers methyl groups onto several spliceosome subunits, PRMT5, is regulated by the light–dark cycle. Methylation of these subunits affects alternative splicing of some genes, thus making them subject to circadian control.

    • Sabrina E. Sanchez
    • , Ezequiel Petrillo
    •  & Marcelo J. Yanovsky

  • News & Views |

    The daily light–dark cycle affects many aspects of normal physiology through the activity of circadian clocks. It emerges that the pancreas has a clock of its own, which responds to energy fluctuations.

    • Katja A. Lamia
    •  & Ronald M. Evans

  • News & Views |

    By synchronizing clocks, humans make more efficient use of their time and orchestrate their activities in different places. Bacteria have now been engineered that similarly coordinate their molecular timepieces.

    • Martin Fussenegger

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