Chronobiology: Getting the timing right

Munich: Sleep patterns are determined by one‘s chronotype, says Till Roenneberg, and everyone should be allowed to follow its dictates. Here he discusses ways to achieve this goal and outlines the benefits it would bring. It’s three o‘clock in the afternoon and Till Roenneberg has just given a lecture. It’s a good time to talk to a chronobiologist about the biological clock – the mechanism that synchronizes the metabolic operations in our bodies with the light-dark cycle and the changing seasons. It turns out that individuals vary in the diurnal timing of their metabolic processes, and can be classified on this basis into a number of ‘chronotypes’. When allowed to follow our natural rhythms, some of us are early birds, some are night owls, and the rest fall somewhere in between. Roenneberg himself is more of a night owl, so he doesn’t like giving interviews early in the day. But now he has taken the time to explain the wider significance of chronobiology, which came to prominence when three pioneers in the field won the 2017 Nobel Prize in Medicine. The medical implications of the circadian clock are the central theme of the upcoming conference on “The Role of Circadian Biology in Preventing and Treating Pathology”, which Roenneberg helped to organize.

The Biological Clock Sets a Different Rhythm for Each Organ

INSERM: A team of Inserm researchers led by Howard Cooper (Inserm Unit 1208 “Stem Cell and Brain Institute”) in collaboration with their colleagues in the U.S. have for the first time established a reference map of gene expression, by organ and time of day. A mammoth task that began a decade ago and has required two years of analysis. These results, published in Science, show just how important it is to consider the biological clock in order to administer medication at the right time for optimized efficacy and minimal side effects. The researchers are now preparing an atlas which will be available for use by the entire scientific community.

Could the Biological Clock Be a Key Ally in the Fight Against Inflammatory Disease?

INSERM: What if the symptoms and seriousness of certain inflammatory diseases were linked to time of day? Researchers from Inserm, Institut Pasteur de Lille and Université de Lille have been working on this hypothesis, after noting that the seriousness and mortality associated with fulminant hepatitis were dependent on the time at which the disease was induced. Their study, conducted on human cells and mice, shows that the anti-inflammatory action of a biological clock protein could prevent the onset of fulminant hepatitis, by alleviating symptoms and increasing survival rates. This research has been published in Gastroenterology.

Hope to find out more about the role of the 24 hour body clock on arthritis

Manchester: The scientists hope to find out more about the role of the 24 hour body clock on two common types of arthritis, osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis. It is well known that symptoms of arthritis get worse at certain times of the day, so by studying the body clock it may be possible to improve treatments and pain relief.

How the Immune System Controls the Human Biological Clock in Times of Infection

Pennsylvania: An important link between the human body clock and the immune system has relevance for better understanding inflammatory and infectious diseases, discovered collaborators at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and Trinity College, Dublin. In a study published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, they report how a critical white blood cell called the macrophage, when exposed to bacteria, makes the biological clock inside the macrophage stop, allowing it to become inflamed.

Finding the body clock’s molecular reset button

McGill: An international team of scientists has discovered what amounts to a molecular reset button for our internal body clock. Their findings reveal a potential target to treat a range of disorders, from sleep disturbances to other behavioural, cognitive and metabolic abnormalities, commonly associated with jet lag, shift work and exposure to light at night, as well as with neuropsychiatric conditions such as depression and autism. In a study published online April 27 in Nature Neuroscience, the authors, led by researchers at McGill and Concordia universities in Montreal, report that the body’s clock is reset when a phosphate combines with a key protein in the brain. This process, known as phosphorylation, is triggered by light.