Analysis of the Arabidopsis Circadian Signalling Network

大多数生物都能测量时间。我们熟悉我们的人体“生物钟”，它充当内部手表，因为当我们穿越时区并时差时，我们会经历生物钟中断的生理影响。植物也能够测量时间，它们测量季节的长度以控制开花时间，许多花在一天中的特定时间开放，例如睡莲花只在中午开放，在黄昏前很久就关闭了。了解植物生物钟很重要，因为我们最近发现，植物的昼夜节律钟有助于使它们的生长速度比没有生物钟的植物快两倍。植物中的计时器存在于每个细胞中，被称为生物钟。我们已经在植物的生物钟中发现了一个新的“齿轮”。我们认为这个齿轮是由气体一氧化氮，一种含有小分子糖的环状ADPR和金属钙组成的。我们将使用新的生物技术，使我们能够测量活细胞中这些化合物的变化，并测量植物中所有基因活性的每日变化，以确定时钟的其他“齿轮”。为此，我们将使用最初由工程师开发的数学工具来理解复杂的机器。

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.