Protein Reviews. Series Editor: M. Zouhair Atassi Baylor College of Medicine Houston, Texas

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1 The Circadian Clock

2 Protein Reviews Series Editor: M. Zouhair Atassi Baylor College of Medicine Houston, Texas For other titles published in this series, go to

3 Urs Albrecht Editor The Circadian Clock

4 Editor Urs Albrecht Unit of Biochemistry Department of Medicine University of Fribourg 1700 Fribourg Switzerland ISBN e-isbn DOI / Springer New York Dordrecht Heidelberg London Library of Congress Control Number: Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2010 All rights reserved. This work may not be translated or copied in whole or in part without the written permission of the publisher (Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, 233 Spring Street, New York, NY 10013, USA), except for brief excerpts in connection with reviews or scholarly analysis. Use in connection with any form of information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed is forbidden. The use in this publication of trade names, trademarks, service marks, and similar terms, even if they are not identified as such, is not to be taken as an expression of opinion as to whether or not they are subject to proprietary rights. Printed on acid-free paper Springer is part of Springer Science+Business Media (

5 Preface With the invitation to edit this volume, I wanted to take the opportunity to assemble reviews on different aspects of circadian clocks and rhythms. Although most contributions in this volume focus on mammalian circadian clocks, the historical introduction and comparative clocks section illustrate the importance of various other organisms in deciphering the mechanisms and principles of circadian biology. Circadian rhythms have been studied for centuries, but only recently, a molecular understanding of this process has emerged. This has taken research on circadian clocks from mystic phenomenology to a mechanistic level; chains of molecular events can describe phenomena with remarkable accuracy. Nevertheless, current models of the functioning of circadian clocks are still rudimentary. This is not due to the faultiness of discovered mechanisms, but due to the lack of undiscovered processes involved in contributing to circadian rhythmicity. We know for example, that the general circadian mechanism is not regulated equally in all tissues of mammals. Hence, a lot still needs to be discovered to get a full understanding of circadian rhythms at the systems level. In this respect, technology has advanced at high speed in the last years and provided us with data illustrating the sheer complexity of regulation of physiological processes in organisms. To handle this information, computer aided integration of the results is of utmost importance in order to discover novel concepts that ultimately need to be tested experimentally. In this development of new concepts lies the chance to understand living organisms better and to develop strategies to apply these new concepts for the benefit of society. A decade ago, the influence of changing day-night cycles (e.g. jet-lag and shift work) on health was intuitively possible but not taken very seriously due to lack of convincing scientific evidence. This has changed in the last years due to discoveries illustrating the involvement of clock components in the development of cancer, obesity and mood disorders. The main task of the circadian clock is to optimize an organism s performance and tune it with temporal changes in the environment. In that sense, the clock links the genetic setting of the organism with its environment. A better understanding of the circadian clock, therefore, will open avenues for treatment of diseases via environmental stimuli such as light. The importance of this approach is evident in the treatment of seasonal affective disorder and probably could be extended to the treatment of other neuropsychiatric disorders in the future. v

6 vi Preface However, this non-pharmacological approach is strongly underrated since no direct economic benefit is evident, except for reducing costs for health care. On the other hand, pharmacological approaches to influence biochemical mechanisms via the circadian clock might emerge. First attempts to optimize available cancer treatments taking the temporal dimension into account, have indicated to be beneficial for patients. However, the awareness of the importance for the timing of medical treatment is still very rudimentary in the medical community. I hope that the different topics described in this book illustrate the importance of the circadian clock for health, although the evidence presented is certainly not complete. The selected topics are thought as starting points for discussions and hopefully ignite new ideas and hypotheses. I thank the authors for their contributions. I also thank the series editor Dr. Zou Atassi, the publisher, and the various funding agencies including the EUCLOCK project for making this work possible. Finally, I thank my wife Andrea and my four children for their patience and support. Fribourg, Switzerland Urs Albrecht October 2009

7 Contents 1 A History of Chronobiological Concepts... 1 Serge Daan 2 Transcriptional Regulation of Circadian Clocks Jürgen A. Ripperger and Steven A. Brown 3 Posttranslational Regulation of Circadian Clocks Jens T. Vanselow and Achim Kramer 4 Non-image-Forming Photoreceptors Stuart N. Peirson and Russell G. Foster 5 Circadian Clocks and Metabolism Henrik Oster 6 Circadian Clock, Cell Cycle and Cancer Zhaoyang Zhao and Cheng Chi Lee 7 Comparative Clocks Martha Merrow, David Lenssen, and Till Roenneberg 8 Circadian Neural Networks Erik D. Herzog and Paul H. Taghert 9 The Circadian Clock and the Homeostatic Hourglass: Two Timepieces Controlling Sleep and Wakefulness Sarah Laxhmi Chellappa and Christian Cajochen vii

8 viii Contents 10 Clocks, Brain Function, and Dysfunction Céline Feillet and Urs Albrecht 11 Systems Biology and Modeling of Circadian Rhythms Thomas d Eysmond and Felix Naef Index

9 Contributors Urs Albrecht Unit of Biochemistry, Department of Medicine, University of Fribourg, 1700 Fribourg, Switzerland Steven A. Brown Institute of Pharmacology and Toxicology, University of Zürich, 8057 Zürich, Switzerland Christian Cajochen Centre for Chronobiology, Psychiatric University Clinics, Wilhelm Kleinstrasse 27, CH-4025 Basel, Switzerland Sarah Laxhmi Chellappa The CAPES Foundation/Ministry of Education of Brazil, Caixa Postal 365, CEP , Brasilia - DF, Brazil; Centre for Chronobiology, Psychiatric University Clinics, Wilhelm Kleinstrasse 27, CH-4025 Basel, Switzerland Sarah.Chellappa@upkbs.ch Serge Daan Unit of Chronobiology, Centre for Life Sciences, University of Groningen, The Netherlands s.daan@rug.nl Thomas d Eysmond School of Life Sciences, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), and Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics (SIB), CH-1015 Lausanne, Switzerland thomas.deysmond@epfl.ch Céline Feillet Unit of Biochemistry, Department of Medicine, University of Fribourg, 1700 Fribourg, Switzerland celine.feillet@unifr.ch ix

10 x Contributors Russell G. Foster Nuffield Laboratory of Ophthalmology, The John Radcliffe Hospital, University of Oxford, Level 5 and 6 West Wing, Headley Way, Headington, Oxford OX3 9DU, UK russell.foster@eye.ox.ac.uk Erik D. Herzog Department of Biology, Washington University, St. Louis, MO 63130, USA herzog@wustl.edu Achim Kramer Laboratory of Chronobiology, Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Germany achim.kramer@charite.de Cheng Chi Lee Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, 6431 Fannin Street, MSB 6.200, Houston, TX Cheng.C.Lee@uth.tmc.edu David Lenssen Unit of Chronobiology, The University of Groningen, Haren, The Netherlands Martha Merrow Unit of Chronobiology, The University of Groningen, Haren, The Netherlands m.merrow@rug.nl Felix Naef School of Life Sciences, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), and Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics (SIB), CH-1015 Lausanne, Switzerland felix.naef@epfl.ch Henrik Oster Circadian Rhythms Group, Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry, Göttingen, Germany henrik.oster@mpibpc.mpg.de Stuart N. Peirson Nuffield Laboratory of Ophthalmology, The John Radcliffe Hospital, University of Oxford, Level 5 and 6 West Wing, Headley Way, Headington, Oxford OX3 9DU, UK Jürgen A. Ripperger Unit of Biochemistry, Department of Medicine, University of Fribourg, 1700 Fribourg, Switzerland juergenalexandereduard.ripperger@unifr.ch Till Roenneberg Institute of Medical Psychology, Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich, Munich, Germany till.roenneberg@med.uni-muenchen.de

11 Contributors xi Paul H. Taghert Department of Anatomy and Neurobiology, Washington University Medical School, St. Louis, MO 63110, USA Jens T. Vanselow Laboratory of Chronobiology, Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Germany Center for Experimental BioInformatics (CEBI), University of Southern Denmark, Odense Zhaoyang Zhao Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, 6431 Fannin Street, MSB 6.200, Houston, TX 77030, USA Zhaoyang.Zhao@uth.tmc.edu