Related topics: plants · circadian rhythms

Altering the circadian clock adapts barley to short growing seasons

To ensure that plants flower at the right time of year, they possess an internal clock that enables them to measure the amount of daylight during a day. In a study published in the journal Plant Physiology, biologists from ...

Protecting rice plants from heat when it attacks at nighttime

Rice (Oryza sativa L.) is the staple food for more than half of the world's population. Based on mathematical modeling, worldwide cereal production is estimated to have a loss of 6%–7% yield per 1°C increase in seasonal ...

Neanderthals may have been morning people, says new study

A new research paper finds that genetic material from Neanderthal ancestors may have contributed to the propensity of some people today to be "early risers," the sort of people who are more comfortable getting up and going ...

New research shows the complexity of bacterial circadian clocks

Bacteria make up more than 10% of all living things but until recently we had little realization that, as in humans, soil bacteria have internal clocks that synchronize their activities with the 24-hour cycles of day and ...

page 1 from 23

Circadian rhythm

A circadian rhythm is a roughly-24-hour cycle in the biochemical, physiological or behavioral processes of living entities, including plants, animals, fungi and cyanobacteria (see bacterial circadian rhythms). The term "circadian", coined by Franz Halberg, comes from the Latin circa, "around," and diem or dies, "day", meaning literally "approximately one day." The formal study of biological temporal rhythms such as daily, tidal, weekly, seasonal, and annual rhythms, is called chronobiology.

Circadian rhythms are endogenously generated, and can be entrained by external cues, called Zeitgebers, the primary one of which is daylight. These rhythms allow organisms to anticipate and prepare for precise and regular environmental changes.

This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA