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.

Comments

Accepted version. Journal of Comparative Physiology A: Neuroethology, Sensory, Neural, and Behavioral Physiology, (2023). DOI. © 2023 Springer. Used with permission.

Available for download on Wednesday, January 01, 2025

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