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Module 1

Module 1 chronobiology

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Vanshita Mittal
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12 views16 pages

Module 1

Module 1 chronobiology

Uploaded by

Vanshita Mittal
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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• Chronobiology is a field of biology that examines periodic

phenomena in the biological processes of living organisms.

• “chrono” means related with time; “biology” means science of life.


Thus, chronobiology is the study of science of life in relation with
time.
• Rhythm = sequence of events that repeat themselves in the
same order and with the same time interval, over and over again.

• Biological rhythm: a biological event or function with a pattern of


activity that is repeated over and over again at a constant time
interval.

• Biological rhythms are those rhythms that arise in organisms to


match external geophysical rhythms with comparable period
Geophysical cycles are the basis of
daily biological rhythms
• The earth rotates on its axis
once every 24 hours
• Daily cycles of
- Light
- Temperature
- Humidity
• Organisms have evolved to
coordinate their activities with
the day-night cycle
What is the purpose of having a biological Examples of Biological
timekeeping system? Rhythms
Promotes organism’s ability to survive by • Heart rate
coordinating its activities with changes in • Breathing
the environment
• Hormone secretion
Coordinates internal processes
• Body temperature
• Sleep/wake cycle
Types of biological rhythms with a geophysical counterpart:

Period Chronobiological
Name Example
Length Name

12.4 h tidal CIRCATIDAL crab activity on shoreline

29 days monthly CIRCALUNAR marine reproduction

365
yearly CIRCANNUAL Hibernation, many reproductive cycles.
days
CIRCADIAN
24 h daily sleep-wake cycle
(circa + diem)
Circadian Rhythms
- Cycles of activity that are repeated approximately every 24 hours
- They respond primarily to light and darkness in an organism's environment.
- Sleeping at night and being awake during the day is an example of a light-related
circadian rhythm.
- Circadian rhythms are found in most living things, including animals, plants.

Crepuscular

A Diurnal Nocturnal
c
t
i
v
i
t
y

Dawn Noon Dusk Midnight Dawn


CRITERIAS OF A CIRCADIAN RHYTHM

To be called circadian, a biological rhythm must meet these four general criteria:

• The rhythms repeat once a day (they have a 24hour period).

• The rhythms persist in the absence of external cues (endogenous).

• The rhythms can be adjusted to match the local time (entrainable).

• The rhythms maintain circadian periodicity over a range of physiological temperatures;

they exhibit temperature compensation.


• A 24-hour biological rhythm controlled by a “pacemaker” in the brain that sends messages
to other systems in the body.

• Circadian rhythm influences various regulatory functions, including the sleep–


wake cycle, body temperature regulation, patterns of activity such as eating and
drinking, and hormonal and neurotransmitter secretion

• Although circadian rhythms are endogenous ("built-in", self-sustained), they are adjusted
(entrained) to the local environment by external cues called zeitgebers, commonly the most
important of which is daylight.
Zeitgeber

• A zeitgeber is any external or environmental cue that entrains, or synchronizes, an organism's


biological rhythms to the earth's 24-hour light/dark cycle and 12 month cycle.
Example-
• Light
• Temperature
• Social interactions
• Pharmacological manipulation
• Exercise
• Eating/drinking patterns

• Zeitgebers induce changes in the concentrations of the molecular components of the clock to
levels consistent with the appropriate stage in the 24-hour cycle, a process termed entrainment.
• A master clock in the brain coordinates all the biological
clocks in a living thing, keeping the clocks in sync.

• In vertebrate animals, including humans, the master clock


is a group of about 20,000 nerve cells (neurons) that form
a structure called the suprachiasmatic nucleus, or SCN.

• The SCN is located in a part of the brain called the


hypothalamus and receives direct input from the eyes.

• These nuclei (one on each side of the brain) play a key


role in coordinating oscillations in other tissues, and in
regulating behavior.

• A specialized population of intrinsically photosensitive


retinal ganglion cells detect light and also project directly
to the SCN.
The classic phase markers for measuring the
timing of a mammal's circadian rhythm are:
• melatonin secretion by the pineal gland
• core body temperature
• plasma level of cortisol
• The hypothalamus sits just above the point where optic nerves cross and when these nerves
signal to the hypothalamus that it is getting dark, the SCN will encourage the production of
melatonin, a sleep hormone, to make you feel tired, telling the body it’s time to rest.
• Body will then pass through a number of stages whilst sleeping, with circadian rhythm regulating
the production of certain hormones and bodily functions.
• Levels of melatonin usually peak at around 2-4 am and, as it approaches daylight, the SCN will
trigger the release of cortisol to help you feel more awake.
Molecular Mechanisms of Biological Clocks
• In the early 1970s, Ron Konopka and Seymour Benzer discovered three mutant strains of fruit
flies whose circadian rhythms were abnormal.

• Further analysis showed the mutants to be alleles of a single locus, which were called
the period or per gene.

• In the absence of normal environmental cues (that is, in constant light or dark), wild-type flies
have periods of activity geared to a 24-hour cycle; pers mutants have 19 hour
rhythms, per1 mutants have 29-hour rhythms, and per0 mutants have no apparent rhythm.

• Normal flies show a circadian variation in the amount of per mRNA and PER protein,
whereas per0 flies, which lack a circadian rhythm, do not show this circadian rhythmicity of
gene expression.
• Humans (and many other animals) have an internal
“clock” that continues to operate in the absence of
any external information about the time of day; under
these conditions, the clock is said to be “free
running.”

• In mice, the circadian clock arises from the


temporally regulated activity of proteins and genes

CRY (cryptochrome), CLOCK (C) (Circadian locomotor output cycles


kaput), BMAL1 (B) (brain and muscle, ARNT-like), PER1 (Period1), PER2
(Period2), PER3 (Period3), and vasopressin prepropressophysin (VP)
(clock controlled genes; ccg)
• These genes and their proteins give rise to transcription/translation autoregulatory
feedback loops with both excitatory and inhibitory components.

• PER2 is a positive regulator of the Bmal1 loop and CRY is a negative regulator of
the period and cryptochrome loops.

• The complete time course of these feedback loops is 24 hours.

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