Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2023
Publisher
Springer
Source Publication
Journal of Comparative Physiology A: Neuroethology, Sensory, Neural, and Behavioral Physiology
Source ISSN
0340-7594
Original Item ID
DOI: 10.1007/s00359-023-01659-1
Abstract
Decades have now passed since Colin Pittendrigh first proposed a model of a circadian clock composed of two coupled oscillators, individually responsive to the rising and setting sun, as a flexible solution to the challenge of behavioral and physiological adaptation to the changing seasons. The elegance and predictive power of this postulation has stimulated laboratories around the world in searches to identify and localize such hypothesized evening and morning oscillators, or sets of oscillators, in insects, rodents, and humans, with experimental designs and approaches keeping pace over the years with technological advances in biology and neuroscience. Here, we recount the conceptual origin and highlight the subsequent evolution of this dual oscillator model for the circadian clock in the mammalian suprachiasmatic nucleus; and how, despite our increasingly sophisticated view of this multicellular pacemaker, Pittendrigh’s binary conception has remained influential in our clock models and metaphors.
Recommended Citation
Evans, Jennifer A. and Schwartz, William J., "On the Origin and Evolution of the Dual Oscillator Model Underlying the Photoperiodic Clockwork in the Suprachiasmatic Nucleus" (2023). Biomedical Sciences Faculty Research and Publications. 262.
https://epublications.marquette.edu/biomedsci_fac/262
Comments
Accepted version. Journal of Comparative Physiology A: Neuroethology, Sensory, Neural, and Behavioral Physiology, (2023). DOI. © 2023 Springer. Used with permission.