Function of food-entrainable clock neurons in the dorsomedial hypothalamic nucleus

当食物供应被暂时限制在一天中的固定时间(限食)时，动物在几天内通过在食物供应期间进食并在之前的几个小时内增加觅食活动来适应这种情况。这些生物节律的变化被认为是由一种食物携带振荡器(FEO)引起的，该振荡器独立于视交叉上核(SCN)中的哺乳动物主时钟，尽管对FEO的物理和分子底物知之甚少。在这项研究中，我们证明了神经系统中不依赖于SCN的FEO需要一个时钟基因BMal1，并且在适应昼夜运动活动和食物摄取以适应限制摄食方面发挥关键作用。

When food availability is temporally restricted to a fixed time of the day(restricted feeding), animals adapt to this condition within a few days by feeding during the period of food availability and increasing food-seeking activity in the preceding hours. These changes in biological rhythms have been postulated to be brought about by a food-entrainable oscillator(FEO) that is independent of the mammalian master clock in the suprachiasmatic nucleus(SCN), although little is known of the physical and molecular substrates of the FEO. In this study, we demonstrated that an SCN-independent FEO in the nervous system requires a clock gene, Bmal1, and plays a critical role in adaptation of circadian locomotor activity and food intake to restricted feeding.