Circadian rhythms in parasites

Circadian rhythms in parasites

Not all daily rhythms are circadian rhythms. The earth’s rotation exposes organisms to rhythmic changes in the environment, such as light/dark cycles. These environmental changes impose rhythms in organisms; however, many of these rhythms may not persist when in constant conditions. The 24-hour rhythms that do persist in these constant conditions are circadian rhythms. For a process to be defin...

Fitness costs of disrupting circadian rhythms in malaria parasites

Circadian biology assumes that biological rhythms maximize fitness by enabling organisms to coordinate with their environment. Despite circadian clocks being such a widespread phenomenon, demonstrating the fitness benefits of temporal coordination is challenging and such studies are rare. Here, we tested the consequences--for parasites--of being temporally mismatched to host circadian rhythms u...

Circadian rhythms.

1997 marks the 25th anniversary of the discovery of the master circadian pacemaker in mammals in the hypothalamic suprachiasmatic nucleus. Remarkable progress has been made over the last 25 years in elucidating the physiological mechanisms involved in the entrainment, generation and expression of circadian rhythms at the cellular and systems levels. The recent discovery and cloning of the first...

Circadian rhythms.

Circadian rhythms are a ubiquitous adaptation of eukaryotic organisms to the most reliable and predictable of environmental changes, the daily cycles of light and temperature. Prominent daily rhythms in behavior, physiology, hormone levels and biochemistry (including gene expression) are not merely responses to these environmental cycles, however, but embody the organism's ability to keep and t...

Circadian rhythms in RA.