Molecular basis of circadian rhythms : function of clock genes

生物钟几乎存在于所有生物体中，其作用是使生物适应日常变化的环境。生物钟的分子机制是当今基础生物学研究的热点之一。生物钟基因分子遗传学研究的最新进展在模式生物中发现了几个生物钟基因。最近，日本科学家克隆了蓝藻和哺乳动物的时钟基因，美日合作对该领域的进展变得更加重要。该项目已作为国际研究赠款申请，并被接受为1999-2000年的基础研究赠款。生物计时中心（NSF）是美国科学家的合作伙伴。为了促进项目成员的合作和个别研究项目，第一次专题讨论会于1999年在夏威夷举行，第二次于2000年在京都举行。在这两次研讨会上，许多非成员科学家也被邀请，并有非常活跃的介绍和讨论，然后引发合作和模拟项目成员的研究。除了两次研讨会之外，1999年底还在爱知县犬山举办了国内研讨会，以促进和激活日本年轻科学家，否则他们中的许多人属于不同的社区，没有机会进行讨论。通过这些活动，日美之间开始了新的合作，并促进了一些已经开始的合作。同时，研讨会的信息对每个项目成员都有很大的激励作用。毕竟，通过这个项目，对生物钟的分子基础的理解已经有了很大的进步，我们认识到简单的负反馈教条不足以解释生物钟的特征，即生物钟振荡是适应性的。为了在分子水平上全面了解生物钟，许多未知的过程和整个细胞代谢都应该包括在昼夜节律系统中。

Circadian clock functions in almost all organisms and function to adapt the life to daily alternating environment. Molecular mechanism of the circadian clock is one of the most interesting subject of basic biology nowadays. Recent advances in molecular genetic approaches to the clock genes identified several clock genes in model organisms. Recently, clock genes of cyanobacteria and mammals was cloned by Japanese scientists and US-Japan collaboration become more important for advance in this field. The project had been applied as International research grants and accepted as basic research grants for 1999-2000. The Center of the biological timing (NSF) is the partner group of US scientists. To promote collaboration and individual research projects of the project members, the first symposium had been held at Hawaii, in 1999 and the second at Kyoto in 2000. In both symposiums, many non-member scientists were also invited and there were very active presentation and discussion, which then trigger collaboration and simulate research of project members. In addition to two symposiums, domestic workshop was held at Inuyama, Aichi, in late 1999 to promote and activate young Japanese scientist who, otherwise, would not have a chance to discuss because many of them belong to different communities.With these activities, new collaboration between Japan and US was started and some collaborations which already started were promoted. Also, the information of the symposium were very stimulus for each project members. After all, with this project, understanding for molecular basis of the circadian clock has been greatly advanced and we recognized that simple negative feedback dogma is insufficient to explain circadian characteristics that features the circadian oscillate to be adaptive. To obtain full understanding the clock at molecular level, many unknown processes and whole cellular metabolism should be included in the circadian system.