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Fungal physiology

A spot of light training?

Nature Reviews Microbiology volume 2, page 354 (2004)Cite this article

Light, the most important environmental training signal, can switch clock genes on, and promote degradation of clock proteins. Multiple input proteins feed light signalling into the N. crassa clock, but entrainment is crucially dependent on the frq gene. frq is negatively regulated by FRQ protein abundance, but because frq is strongly induced by a pulse of light, it was previously thought that the fungal clock was light-driven, and that the effects of light could over-ride autorepression by the FRQ protein. Here, Tan et al. show that during a 24-h day the frq gene is strongly induced at 'lights-on', and decreases after 'lights-off', so the clock does seem to be light-driven. What happens to the FRQ protein though, during daily cycles?

Using 24-h days with different photoperiods — short days/long nights or short nights/long days — FRQ abundance was upregulated after lights-on, but the timing of this was found to depend on the length of the night. Long nights resulted in a rapid upsurge in abundance of the FRQ protein after lights-on, whereas after short nights, abundance of the FRQ protein was upregulated after lights-on, but with a considerable delay. This indicates that transcription and translation at the frq locus have become dissociated by the length of the photoperiod. Plus, levels of the FRQ protein declined after lights-off at different rates, dependent on the photoperiod. Half-maximal levels were always reached at around midnight, whatever the photoperiod, within a 24-h day.

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References

ORIGINAL RESEARCH PAPER

  1. Tan, Y. et al. Entrainment dissociates transcription and translation of a circadian clock gene in Neurospora. Curr. Biol. 14, 433–438 (2004)

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

FURTHER READING

  1. Liu, Y. Molecular mechanisms of entrainment in the Neurospora circadian clock. J. Biol. Rhythms 18, 195–205 (2003)

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

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Authors
  1. Susan Jones
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Jones, S. A spot of light training?. Nat Rev Microbiol 2, 354 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrmicro899

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