About this Research Topic
The 2017 Nobel Prize for Medicine or Physiology was awarded to Jeff Hall, Michael Rosbash and Michael Young, three molecular geneticists who pioneered the study of circadian rhythms in Drosophila. Understandably, the fundamental genetic bases of biological rhythms is focused on a few model organisms, cyanobacteria, Arabidopsis, Drosophila, the mouse, and humans, whose genomes are well characterised. More recently and with the development of 'omics' and mutagenesis technologies such as CRISPR/Cas9, this type of work has been extended to more exotic, and arguably, more ecologically interesting 'non-model organisms'. This allows a comparative approach to studying circadian rhythms that has revealed a considerable evolutionary flexibility in their underlying mechanisms. We shall explore how different organisms use their circadian clock to organize their temporal schedules and how this adapts them to environmental challenges.
A long-standing and surprisingly difficult question to answer has been ‘what role do biological rhythms play in the Darwinian fitness of an organism?’. A comparative approach, in which the rhythmic phenotypes of different species of animal or plant are studied can provide clues to how rhythmicity may adapt an organism to its particular niche.
We shall be recruiting authors who would like to contribute both original research and reviews, and we will be particularly pleased to receive manuscripts that take the following approaches, although not exclusively:
1. Biological rhythms including circadian, circatidal, circalunar/lunidian or seasonal in ecologically interesting organisms
2. Comparative and evolutionary analyses of circadian rhythms
3. Population genetic approaches to biological cycles
4. Biological rhythms in an agricultural or medical context
A long-standing and surprisingly difficult question to answer has been ‘what role do biological rhythms play in the Darwinian fitness of an organism?’. A comparative approach, in which the rhythmic phenotypes of different species of animal or plant are studied can provide clues to how rhythmicity may adapt an organism to its particular niche.
We shall be recruiting authors who would like to contribute both original research and reviews, and we will be particularly pleased to receive manuscripts that take the following approaches, although not exclusively:
1. Biological rhythms including circadian, circatidal, circalunar/lunidian or seasonal in ecologically interesting organisms
2. Comparative and evolutionary analyses of circadian rhythms
3. Population genetic approaches to biological cycles
4. Biological rhythms in an agricultural or medical context
Keywords: Biological Rhythms, Circadian Clocks, Chronobiology, Biological cycles, Rhythmicity
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