RENO, Nev. It's just a worm, a tiny soil-dwelling nematode worm but the implications are big for biomedicine and circadian biology as shown in a recent study authored by University of Nevada, Reno researcher Alexander van der Linden. The article on the circadian clock of the Caenorhabditis elegans worm was published in the peer-reviewed, open-access journal, PLoS Biology.
"Circadian rhythms are important in all organisms because they regulate biological functions such as food intake, temperature, metabolic rate and sleep," van der Linden said. "The discovery of clock-controlled genes in C. elegans should lead to an expanded research role in worms, and give a better understanding of the mammalian circadian clock.
For more than two decades, researchers have wondered whether C. elegans, one of the foremost research model organisms, contains a circadian clock. Circadian rhythmic behaviors described previously in C. elegans are variable and hard to quantify, and no genes were known to exhibit gene expression oscillations with 24-hour cycles as shown in many other animals.
Now, a team of researchers led by professors of biology Piali Sengupta and Michael Rosbash at Brandeis University, Waltham, and lead author van der Linden, who is a former postdoctoral fellow in the Sengupta Lab and now assistant professor in the College of Science at the University of Nevada, Reno, has uncovered genes in C. elegans under clock control from both light and temperature.
"C. elegans offers several advantages to study the function of human disease genes through their corresponding worm genes," he said. "We now not only have a new model to study the function of this important biological clock, but we can also study how the clock evolved over time, since nematodes and humans diverged about 600 to 1,200 million years ago."
Almost every organism on earth exhibits circadian rhythms periodic cy
'/>"/>
| Contact: Mike Wolterbeek mwolterbeek@unr.edu University of Nevada, Reno Source:Eurekalert |
Related biology news :
1. VCU Massey discovery could lead to breakthrough for non-small cell lung cancer
2. Longevity breakthrough: The metabolic state of mitochondria controls life span
3. Argonne scientists awarded supercomputing time to enable scientific breakthroughs
4. $1.6 million to take forward breakthrough research in heart disease
5. Medical imaging breakthrough uses light and sound to see microscopic details inside our bodies
6. A recent IRCM breakthrough impacts cancer research
7. Breakthrough: With a chaperone, copper breaks through
8. Research breakthrough hailed on the anniversary of gene discovery
9. A scientific breakthrough could be the first step in a better treatment for leukemia patients
10. Microbial breakthrough impacts health, agriculture, biofuels
11. Carbon mapping breakthrough
| Copyright © 2003-2012 Bio-Medicine. All rights reserved. ABOUT | CONTACT US | DISCLAIMER | PRIVACY POLICY | TERMS AND CONDITIONS |  |