New components of the circadian oscillator system of Neurospora

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Circadian clocks drive 24-hour rhythms in living things at all levels of organization, from single cells to whole organisms. In spite of the importance of clocks for daily cycles of sleep/wake in humans, seasonal flowering in plants, navigational ability in migrating butterflies, and countless other processes, we still don’t know exactly how these clocks work at the molecular level. In eukaryotes, a set of “clock proteins” turns on and off specific genes in a 24-hour feedback loop. This “clock gene feedback loop” has been the dominant idea about how clocks work for many years. However, some rhythms can still be seen when these feedback loops are not functioning. My lab is trying to find out how clocks without the known feedback loops work, and we are in the forefront of the effort to expose the deficiencies in the old idea and find new clock mechanisms. We use the fungus