Data-driven and evidence-based researcher
How circadian clocks were evolved is a big topic. At the first sight, it might be hard to believe that the clock we have seen in fungus, animals and many other organisms share similar mechanism. Well, it was also hard to believe that the complex behavior like rest/activity is regulated by only a set of clock genes. After all, bacteria, plants, insects and us have a common ancestry.
This is a nice essay from Drs. Loros and Dunlap regarding the origin of circadian clock in Eukaryotic cells.
http://www.cell.com/molecular-cell/abstract/S1097-2765(17)30887-0
Clock gene, a core clock component is also involved in gene regulation outside of circadian rhythms. A recent study of the labs of Drs. Genevieve Konopka and Joe Takahashi suggests that Clock is also a key point in the hierarchy of molecular pathways for human brain development and evolution. We look forward that the involvement of “humanized mice” research by Dr. Konopka will give a boost of CLOCK in the evolution of human brain.
Novel transcriptional networks regulated by CLOCK in human neurons
I believe almost all professors want to be great mentors as professors themselves benefited greatly from their own mentors’ support during their career development. Different trainees may have different type of views in the relationship with their mentors.
Those resources might be helpful for those who want to learn more about this topic.
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The S2 cell line is a popular Drosophila cell line, which is widely used in the fields of cell biology and biochemistry. By measuring a traditional reporter and canonical clock genes expression, it seemed that this cell line lacked a circadian rhythm. However, when omics approaches were applied, circadian rhythms were detected at all levels from gene expression to the metabolism.
Metabolic oscillations on the circadian time scale in Drosophila cells lacking clock genes
It is clear now that the malaria parasite has an intrinsic clock. Two recent Science articles by the labs of Dr. Takahashi at UTSW and Dr. Haase at Duke elegantly demonstrated this very exciting discovery.
The massive gene expression programs that are regulated by this newly discovered circadian oscillator in Plasmodium is more like what happens in the cyanobacteria (Liu et al., 1995). This oscillator seems to generate the circadian rhythms of not only biological clock but also cell cycle maintain periodicity. It is already known that the Plasmodium doesn’t have homologs for known core circadian clock genes. How does the intrinsic clock is operated in malaria parasite cells? It seems to me there is a new circadian clock to explore in this organism. If we can understand the molecular mechanism of the parasite clock then we could potentially target this clock for new antimalarial treatments.
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