News Archive Item
Study: Metabolism in the brain fluctuates with circadian rhythm
Description:
Cell and developmental biology professor and Illinois IGERT CMMB PI, Martha Gillette, and her colleagues at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign discovered that metabolism influences time-keeping in the brain.
The rhythm of life is driven by the cycles of day and night, and most organisms carry in their cells a common, (roughly) 24-hour beat. In animals, this rhythm emerges from a tiny brain structure called the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) in the hypothalamus. Take it out of the brain and keep it alive in a lab dish and this “brain clock” will keep on ticking, ramping up or gearing down production of certain proteins at specific times of the day, day after day.
A new study reveals that the brain clock itself is driven, in part, by metabolism, the production and flow of chemical energy in cells. The researchers focused primarily on a phenomenon known as “redox” in tissues of the SCN from the brains of rats and mice. Full story >>
