Biological clocks are molecularly driven and are set, or synchronized, by the daily cycles of light and dark. Using the fungus Neurospora, the Dartmouth team is studying how organisms keep track of time using this internal clock.
"What we have discovered is that a protein called White Collar-1 is both the photoreceptor and the mechanism that turns on the frequency gene, all in one molecule," explains Allan Froehlich, the lead author. "It's the combination of the two activities that is so interesting."
The findings, by Professors Jay Dunlap and Jennifer Loros, graduate student Allan Froehlich, and post-doctoral fellow Yi Liu, now on the faculty at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, was published in the Aug. 2 issue of Science; the study was reported online in the July 4, 2002, issue of Sciencexpress. The Dunlap and Loros laboratories have made numerous contributions to understanding the genetic foundation for biological clocks.
Researchers, working with a variety of organisms, have already begun to understand how photoreceptor proteins perceive light at the molecular level and then pass on this information through a complex series of proteins. However, this finding with the White Collar-1 protein reveals a relatively simple process between a light-perceiving protein and turning on a gene.
"Virtually nothing is known about how pathogenic fungi respond to light or whether our discovery can be exploited for a noninvasive medical therapy," Dunlap says. "But, if you want to do therapy--antifungal, antibacterial or anything
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Contact: Sue Knapp
sue.knapp@dartmouth.edu
603-646-3661
Dartmouth College
6-Aug-2002