Analysis of Thermosensitive Neurons Required for Temperature-entrained Rhythms of C. elegans
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Authors
Niehues, Lara E.
Issue Date
2014
Type
Thesis
Language
en_US
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Abstract
Circadian clocks function to synchronize the organismal biology, including
behavior and gene expression, to a 24 hour cycle following the Earth’s axial rotation.
The circadian clock is most commonly entrained via light, however in organisms who are
rarely exposed to light, temperature provides another important external cue. Although
light-entrainment has been heavily studied in higher organisms such as Drosophila
melanogaster and mammals, little is known how temperature entrains the circadian
clock. Previous research in the lab has discovered circadian genes entrained by
temperature cycles in Caenorhabditis elegans (C.elegans), a free-living nematode that
lives in soil and whose genome has been completely mapped. To further understand
how temperature entrains the C. elegans circadian clock, a novel circadian reporter was
developed in which temperature-entrained rhythms can be monitored. Since C. elegans
has a well-mapped neural circuitry with defined thermosensitive neurons that sense
small changes in temperatures, we combined the novel circadian reporter with strains in
which the function of specific thermosensitive neurons were genetically ablated. The
goal of this thesis is to identify the neural pathways underlying the temperatureentrained
clock of C. elegans.
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In Copyright(All Rights Reserved)