http://phys.org/ en-us Phys.org internet news portal provides the latest news on science including: Physics, Nanotechnology, Life Sciences, Space Science, Earth Science, Environment, Health and Medicine. (Phys.org) -- A group of biology researchers, led by Akhilesh Reddy from Cambridge University have found an enzyme that they believe serves as a circadian clock that operates in virtually all forms of life. In a paper published in the journal Nature, they describe a class of enzymes known as peroxiredoxins which are present in almost all plants and other organisms and which appear to serve as a basic ingredient in non-feedback loop biological clocks. http://phys.org/news256476911.html Biology Thu, 17 May 2012 13:10:01 EST news256476911 Barley grown in Scandinavian countries is adapted in a similar way to reindeer to cope with the extremes of day length at high latitudes. Researchers have found a genetic mutation in some Scandinavian barley varieties that disrupts the circadian clock that barley from southern regions use to time their growing season. Just as reindeer have dropped the clock in adapting to extremely long days, so has Scandinavian barley to grow successfully in that region's short growing season. This new knowledge may be useful in efforts to adapt crops for regions where the growing season is short. http://phys.org/news255950294.html Biology Fri, 11 May 2012 10:21:24 EST news255950294 In a study of the molecular underpinnings of plants' pest resistance, Rice University biologists have shown that plants both anticipate daytime raids by hungry insects and make sophisticated preparations to fend them off. http://phys.org/news248376419.html Biology Mon, 13 Feb 2012 17:27:28 EST news248376419 Scientists know that plants can actually "sense" day length, and "schedule" their growth to coincide with specific environmental conditions. These natural events are based on the circadian clock, a 24-hour system found in most biochemical and physiological processes. Plants grow better in circadian conditions that correspond to natural environments, but until now researchers have not understood how plants' internal circadian clocks respond to irregular lighting environments such as those found in many greenhouses. http://phys.org/news243090985.html Biology Wed, 14 Dec 2011 13:16:35 EST news243090985 (PhysOrg.com) -- Feeling jet-lagged? You may need your internal clock reset. New Cornell research has taken a major step toward treating jet lag and other more serious syndromes by advancing our understanding of how circadian rhythms work. http://phys.org/news240562526.html Biology Tue, 15 Nov 2011 08:30:02 EST news240562526 It's no secret that long-distance, west-to-east air travel – Seattle to Paris, for example – can raise havoc with a person's sleep and waking patterns, and that the effects are substantially less pronounced when traveling in the opposite direction. http://phys.org/news237726036.html Biology Thu, 13 Oct 2011 12:00:52 EST news237726036 Do animals that have evolved for millions of years underground, completely isolated from the day-night cycle, still "know" what time it is? Does a normal circadian clock persist during evolution under constant darkness? A new study directly tackles these fundamental questions by investigating a species of cavefish, Phreatichthys andruzzii, which has lived isolated for 2 million years beneath the Somalian desert. Many fish species have evolved in the absence of sunlight in cave systems around the world, sharing a common set of striking adaptations including eye loss. The new study, published September 6 in the online, open access journal PLoS Biology, reports that this cavefish has an unusual circadian clock; it ticks with an extremely long period (up to 47 hours), and is completely blind. http://phys.org/news234551221.html Biology Tue, 06 Sep 2011 18:07:26 EST news234551221 Yale University researchers have identified a key genetic gear that keeps the circadian clock of plants ticking, a finding that could have broad implications for global agriculture. http://phys.org/news234098961.html Biology Thu, 01 Sep 2011 12:29:54 EST news234098961 Farmers and other astute observers of nature have long known that crops like corn and sorghum grow taller at night. But the biochemical mechanisms that control this nightly stem elongation, common to most plants, have been something of a mystery to biologists—until now. http://phys.org/news229780168.html Biology Wed, 13 Jul 2011 13:00:26 EST news229780168 (PhysOrg.com) -- Research has shown that light is the key to getting our 'body clocks' back in sync and now a new study exploring the resynchronisation mechanism in insects has discovered a molecule essential to the process. http://phys.org/news229745361.html Biology Wed, 13 Jul 2011 03:10:52 EST news229745361 Just as monarch butterflies depend on circadian cues to begin their annual migration, so do plants to survive freezing temperatures. http://phys.org/news221827437.html Biology Tue, 12 Apr 2011 11:44:07 EST news221827437 For more than 20 years, theoretical mathematical models have predicted that a delay built into a negative feedback system is at the heart of the molecular mechanism that governs circadian clocks in mammalian cells. Now, the first experimental proof of this theory has been provided by an international research team led by molecular biologists and information scientists from the RIKEN Center for Developmental Biology in Kobe. The demonstration of the feedback delay should lead to a better understanding of how cellular clocks function, and therefore how mammals adjust to the regular daily and seasonal changes in their environment. The work could also open the way to the development of treatments for circadian disorders, such as seasonal affective disorder, jet lag and even bipolar disorder. http://phys.org/news220262088.html Biology Fri, 25 Mar 2011 08:55:08 EST news220262088 As in manmade timepieces, the movements of the genetic clockworks that lie behind circadian cycles involve a remarkable amount of complexity. Researcher's from RIKEN's Laboratory for Systems Biology report how delayed feedback repression is a key factor in mammalian clock function. http://phys.org/news217257046.html Biology Fri, 18 Feb 2011 13:11:48 EST news217257046 Northwestern University scientists have discovered a new mechanism in the core gears of the circadian clock. They found the loss of a certain gene, dubbed "twenty-four," messes up the rhythm of the common fruit fly's sleep-wake cycle, making it harder for the flies to awaken. http://phys.org/news217083707.html Medicine & Health Wed, 16 Feb 2011 13:02:48 EST news217083707 The mechanism that controls the internal 24-hour clock of all forms of life from human cells to algae has been identified by scientists. http://phys.org/news215270368.html Biology Wed, 26 Jan 2011 13:20:00 EST news215270368 A new study takes a close look at the brain of the migratory monarch butterfly to better understand how these remarkable insects use an internal compass and skylight cues to navigate from eastern North America to Mexico each fall. The research, published by Cell Press in the January 27 issue of the journal Neuron, provides key insights into how ambiguous sensory signals can be integrated in the brain to guide complex navigation. http://phys.org/news215267663.html Medicine & Health Wed, 26 Jan 2011 12:35:26 EST news215267663 In a new paper published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Aziz Sancar, MD, PhD, the Sarah Graham Kenan Professor of Biochemistry and Biophysics in the UNC School of Medicine, and his colleagues have taken an important step in understanding the underlying molecular signals that influence a broad array of biological processes ranging from the sleep-wake cycle to cancer growth and development. http://phys.org/news212837497.html Biology Wed, 29 Dec 2010 09:31:59 EST news212837497 It's just a worm, a tiny soil-dwelling nematode worm – but the implications are big for biomedicine and circadian biology as shown in a recent study authored by University of Nevada, Reno researcher Alexander van der Linden. The article on the circadian clock of the Caenorhabditis elegans worm was published in the peer-reviewed, open-access journal, PLoS Biology. http://phys.org/news211800344.html Biology Fri, 17 Dec 2010 10:10:30 EST news211800344 A gene that controls part of the 'tick tock' in a plant's circadian clock has been identified by UC Davis researchers. And not only is the plant gene very similar to one in humans, but the human gene can work in plant cells -- and vice versa. The research is published this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. http://phys.org/news210436537.html Biology Wed, 01 Dec 2010 14:50:01 EST news210436537 How are circadian clocks able to synchronize themselves accurately to the day/night cycle without taking account of extreme light intensity fluctuations over the course of a single day or from one day to the next? The mathematical analysis of the activity profiles of two central genes of the circadian clock of a microscopic green alga has recently been carried out by French researchers from the Observatoire Oceanologique de Banyuls at CNRS. This study reveals that the circadian clock is only sensitive to light if it is out of sync and needs to be reset. This work has recently been published in the journal PloS Computational Biology. http://phys.org/news209643342.html Biology Mon, 22 Nov 2010 10:16:02 EST news209643342 Scientists from the Florida campus of The Scripps Research Institute have identified for the first time a novel mechanism that regulates circadian rhythm, the master clock that controls the body's natural 24-hour physiological cycle. These new findings could provide a new target not only for jet lag, shift work, and sleep disturbances, but also for disorders that result from circadian rhythm disruption, including diabetes and obesity as well as some types of cancer. http://phys.org/news208704523.html Chemistry Thu, 11 Nov 2010 13:28:57 EST news208704523 With the help of tiny, see-through fish, Stanford University School of Medicine researchers are homing in on what happens in the brain while you sleep. In a new study, they show how the circadian clock and sleep affect the scope of neuron-to-neuron connections in a particular region of the brain, and they identified a gene that appears to regulate the number of these connections, called synapses. http://phys.org/news205588181.html Medicine & Health Wed, 06 Oct 2010 12:49:59 EST news205588181 An international collaboration led by a University of Pennsylvania anthropologist has shown that environmental factors, like temperature and light, play as much of a role in the activity of traditionally nocturnal monkeys as the circadian rhythm that regulates periods of sleep and wakefulness. http://phys.org/news202756359.html Biology Fri, 03 Sep 2010 18:12:59 EST news202756359 Circadian rhythmicity is regulated by circadian clock genes, and animal studies have shown that chronic drinking can alter expressions in these genes. A new study has found that significantly lower levels of messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) - a molecule of RNA that helps to manufacture proteins - in circadian clock genes in alcohol-dependent (AD) patients support a relationship between circadian clock gene dysregulation and drinking in humans. http://phys.org/news201886475.html Medicine & Health Tue, 24 Aug 2010 17:40:02 EST news201886475 UK researchers have successfully used a drug to reset and restart the natural 24 hour body clock of mice in the lab. The ability to do this in a mammal opens up the possibility of dealing with a range of human difficulties including some psychiatric disorders, jet lag and the health impacts of shift work. http://phys.org/news201781422.html Medicine & Health Mon, 23 Aug 2010 11:23:57 EST news201781422 Getting a good night's sleep often comes down to technique. Avoiding late-night technology use and keeping a regular sleep schedule are two important techniques to heed as kids head back to school. http://phys.org/news200747675.html Medicine & Health Wed, 11 Aug 2010 12:14:46 EST news200747675 Using molecular techniques, Agricultural Research Service (ARS) and collaborating scientists have shown how the subversion of a single gene in wheat by two fungal foes triggers a kind of cellular suicide in the grain crop's leaves. http://phys.org/news198236950.html Biology Tue, 13 Jul 2010 11:20:02 EST news198236950 Journeys across several time zones make our internal body clocks go haywire. We feel exhausted and tense, and our sleep pattern is out of synch. As scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry have now succeeded in demonstrating for mice, the clocks associated with individual organs in the body adapt to the new time at different speeds. As a result, the body's physiological processes are no longer coordinated. http://phys.org/news196519227.html Medicine & Health Wed, 23 Jun 2010 14:20:02 EST news196519227 The pancreas has its own molecular clock. Now, for the first time, a Northwestern University study has shown this ancient circadian clock regulates the production of insulin. If the clock is faulty, the result is diabetes. http://phys.org/news196087690.html Medicine & Health Fri, 18 Jun 2010 13:48:45 EST news196087690 (PhysOrg.com) -- A team of researchers at MIT and the University of California at San Diego has shown how cell division in a type of bacteria known as cyanobacteria is controlled by the same kind of circadian rhythms that govern human sleep patterns. http://phys.org/news188138468.html Biology Thu, 18 Mar 2010 14:00:04 EST news188138468