Publication Date:
2022-05-26
Description:
Author Posting. © The Author(s), 2013. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of Oxford University Press for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Integrative and Comparative Biology 53 (2013): 118-130, doi:10.1093/icb/ict024.
Description:
The circadian clock is a molecular network that translates predictable environmental signals, such as light levels, into organismal responses, including behavior and physiology. Regular oscillations of the molecular components of the clock enable individuals to anticipate regularly fluctuating environmental conditions. Cnidarians play important roles in benthic and pelagic marine environments, and also occupy a key evolutionary position as the likely sister group to the bilaterians. Together, these attributes make members of this phylum attractive as models for testing hypotheses on role for circadian clocks in regulating behavior, physiology, and reproduction as well as those regarding the deep evolutionary conservation of circadian regulatory pathways in animal evolution. Here, we review and synthesize the field of cnidarian circadian biology by discussing the diverse effects of daily light cycles on cnidarians, summarizing the molecular evidence for the conservation of a bilaterian-like circadian clock in anthozoan cnidarians, and presenting new empirical data supporting the presence of a conserved feed-forward loop in the starlet sea anemone, Nematostella vectensis. Furthermore, we discuss critical gaps in our current knowledge about the cnidarian clock, including the functions directly regulated by the clock and the precise molecular interactions that drive the oscillating gene-expression patterns. We conclude that the field of cnidarian circadian biology is moving rapidly toward linking molecular mechanisms with physiology and behavior.
Description:
This work was supported by the United States – Israel Binational Science Foundation award 2011187 (AMT and OL), the National Institutes of Health / National Institute of Child Health and Human Development award HD062178 (AMR), and generous funding from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte (AMR).
Description:
2014-04-25
Keywords:
Circadian clock
;
Coral
;
Cryptochrome
;
Nematostella
;
Photoperiod
Repository Name:
Woods Hole Open Access Server
Type:
Preprint
Format:
application/pdf
Format:
image/tiff
Permalink
