Sharing new non-invasive circadian phenotyping methods

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Life on Earth has evolved under a rhythmically changing cycle of day and night. As a result, virtually all organisms have evolved internal biological clocks with a period of around 24h, enabling them to anticipate and adapt to predictable changes in their environment. Circadian clocks regulate virtually every aspects of our physiology and behaviour - including activity, sleep and body temperature. Circadian rhythms are widely studied in mouse models, typically using home cage activity. However, measuring sleep and body temperature require surgical implantation of electrodes or internal devices. Our group has developed new methods of measuring sleep and body temperature rhythms in mice, based upon non-invasive sensors placed above the home cage that detect movement or heat signatures. We have already shown that these methods can reliably measure sleep and body temperature, providing an alternative to invasive methods. This proposal will share our expertise in these methods with a network of five research labs in Berlin. All five groups work on circadian rhythms, but in different areas ranging from immunology and cancer to neurodegenerative disease. By establishing our methods in a single location, we can therefore encourage the use of our new refined methods in a large number of end users. To achieve these aims we will organise a series of practical workshops in Oxford, where collaborators from Berlin will be able to learn about the systems, see first-hand how we are using them and experience the opportunity to put their own systems together and see the data they produce. These workshops will allow us to develop better online training material that will also help others use these methods.Finally, as part of this work we will also develop new methods to analyse and share data. Using these methods we are able to measure circadian rhythms every minute of every day. However, measuring activity, sleep or body temperature rhythms over days produces huge amounts of data. This data is only of helpful if important features can be extracted from it. In many disorders, circadian rhythms become disrupted. For example, sleep patterns are affected in many different conditions, including as a result of infection, cancer and neurodegenerative disease. In this proposal, we will work with mathematical experts to develop new ways of analysing this data. In addition, we will store our data - along with key information about the experiments - on website databases that allow other researchers free to access it. By sharing data in this manner, needless replication of animal studies can be avoided, and other researchers can use this data to develop new analysis methods and even conduct new studies without the need to use further animals.