Spatial and Temporal Mapping of the Suprachiasmatic Nucleus Transcriptome

生理和行为的生物节律，如睡眠/清醒周期，由位于大脑底部下丘脑的内部生物钟调节。这种时钟(位于被称为视交叉上核或SCN的大脑区域)有一个明确的结构，具有许多哺乳动物物种都保留的特征。这个大脑区域的复杂性如何影响生物体的功能，目前还没有完全了解。SCN似乎有专门处理感觉输入和产生节奏输出的区域。利用基于基因表达的方法，该项目旨在区分时钟的这些亚区的功能，以及它们如何对生物体的整体功能做出贡献。预计这些实验的结果将揭示关于生物钟的结构如何与其功能相关的新信息，以及时钟的不同部分如何执行不同的功能。这个项目将对我们目前对时钟功能的理解产生重大影响，时钟功能在几乎所有动物中都有共同的机制。基因表达数据将保存在国家医学图书馆的基因表达总览中，供其他研究人员和公众使用。

Biological rhythms in physiology and behavior, such as the sleep/wake cycle, are regulated by an internal biological clock located at the base of the brain in the hypothalamus. This clock (located in a brain region called the suprachiasmatic nucleus, or SCN) has a well-defined structure that has many features that are conserved across mammalian species. The ways in which the complexities of this brain region contribute to the function of organisms are not fully understood. The SCN appears to have regions devoted to processing sensory input and generating rhythmic output. Using a gene-expression based approach, this project aims to distinguish the functions of these subregions of the clock and how they contribute to the overall function of the organism. It is anticipated that the results of these experiments will reveal novel information about how the structure of the biological clock relates to its function, and how different portions of the clock carry out different functions. This project will significantly impact our current understanding of clock function, which has common mechanisms in nearly all animals. Gene expression data will be deposited in the National Library of Medicine's Gene Expression Omnibus where it will be available to other researchers and the public.