Analysis of the Arabidopsis Circadian Signalling Network

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Most living things are able to measure time. We are familiar with our human 'body clock' which acts as an internal watch because we experience the physiological effects of disruption of the clock when we cross time zones and get jet-lag. Plants also are able to measure time, they measure the length of the seasons to control the time to flower and many flowers open at specific times of the day, for example water lily flowers are only open in the middle of the day and close long before dusk. It is important to understand the plant clock because we have recently found that the circadian clock of plants helps make them grow twice as fast as plants that do not have a working clock. The time-keeper in plants is present in every cell and is known as a circadian clock. We have identified a new 'cog' in the circadian clock of plants. We think this cog is made up of the gas nitric oxide, a small sugar containing molecule called cyclic ADPR and the metal calcium. We will use new biological techniques that allow us to measure changes in these compounds in living cells and measure daily changes in the activity of all the genes in the plant to identify other 'cogs' of the clock. To do this we will use mathematical tools originally developed by Engineers to understand complex machines.