Control circadiano de los ciclos de sueño y vigilia: la perspectiva de Drosophila.

CERIANI, MF

Montevideo, Uruguay

Congreso; Congreso Nacional de Bio Ciencias; 2017

Oscillations between day and night conditions are dominant, at times neglected, evolutionary driving forces. To cope with such challenges, life on earth has developed biochemical timers that run with periods similar to the earth´s rotation, altogether known as circadian clocks. The fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster has been instrumental in understanding how these timekeeping systems work at the molecular level, and to demonstrate that multiple layers of interconnected cellular mechanisms are recruited by the clock to ensure its function.How does a group of neurons in the fly brain orchestrate the animal?s activity pattern throughout the day? In principle, presumably identical molecular clocks running at the cellular level are assembled into clusters that could play specific roles. Most of them receive environmental inputs, process information and organize activity of target regions through output pathways. We are beginning to dissect the logic of the circadian system through molecular manipulations of different neuronal populations along will the characterization of the neurotransmitters and neuropeptides relevant for synchronization.