The circadian clock is a ubiquitous time-tracking system that enable organisms from all domains of life to anticipate environmental changes, thereby adapting their physiological processes to the external light-dark cycles generated by the planet's rotation around its own axis. In mammals, a circadian pacemaker in the brain entrains the clocks located in the peripheral tissues, resulting in the circadian rhythmicity of a large array of biological processes, including metabolism, behavior and immunity.

At the molecular level, the mammalian circadian clock operates in all cells via transcriptional-translational feedback autoregulatory loops, in which transcriptional activators induce the expression of repressor genes and of many tissue-specific clock-controlled genes. In humans, disruption of circadian rhythms has become a hallmark of modern lifestyle and has been associated to increased susceptibility to many diseases, including depression, cancer, metabolic disorders, inflammatory pathologies and risk of infections.

Studies conducted in the last years have highlighted the extent to which the molecular clock controls fundamental aspects of the immune response in different organisms, as well as the response to bacterial and parasitic infection. Moreover, recent reports have identified the circadian clock as a potentially crucial mediator of the influence that the microbiota exerts on our health.

This Frontiers Research Topic will collect studies focusing on the role of circadian rhythm in the regulation of host immune responses to infection in mammals, as well as in controlling the physiology of microbes, and how this can affect host-microbe interactions, either mutualistic or pathogenic.

We particularly welcome manuscripts on the following subjects:
- Circadian control of immune response to bacterial infections
- Circadian control of immune response viral, fungal and protozoan infections
- Circadian rhythm of microbes
- Circadian control of the gut microbiota
- Trans-kingdom interactions between circadian rhythms in mammals and in microbes

This Research Topic is open to all forms of submission: Original Research Articles, Review and Mini-Review articles and Perspectives.

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Frontiers in Cellular and Infection Microbiology

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