Developmental mechanisms of circadian clock in mouse embryo

2017 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 15H04683
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (B)
• Allocation Type: Single-year Grants
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: Environmental physiology(including physical medicine and nutritional physiology)
• Research Institution: Kyoto Prefectural University of Medicine
• Principal Investigator: YAGITA Kazuhiro 京都府立医科大学, 医学(系)研究科(研究院), 教授 (90324920)
• Co-Investigator(Renkei-kenkyūsha): KOIKE Nobuya 京都府立医科大学, 医学研究科, 講師 (00399685)
• Project Period (FY): 2015-04-01 – 2018-03-31
• Keywords: 環境生理学 / 生物時計 / 発生発達 / 概日リズム / 体内時計

Outline of Final Research Achievements

Circadian clocks reside in each cell-level throughout the body in mammals. Intrinsic cellular circadian clocks develop cell-autonomously during the cellular differentiation process. However, mechanisms controlling the emergence of cellular circadian clock oscillation in vivo have not yet been fully understood. Here, we show that Dicer/Dgcr8-mediated post-transcriptional mechanisms control the CLOCK protein expression in both mouse fetal hearts and in vitro differentiating ESCs, which contributes to the emergence of circadian clock in mammalian cells. This event occurs after cell lineage determination into hearts or loss of pluripotent stem cell markers in differentiating ESCs, suggesting the cellular differentiation-coupled clock development may be conducted by a two-step program consisting of cellular differentiation and following establishment of circadian transcriptional / translational feedback loops.

Free Research Field

環境生理学、時間生物学、細胞分化