CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

Oscillations between day and night are dominant, at times neglected, evolutionary driving forces. To cope with such challenges, biochemical timers that run with periods similar to the earth's rotation (¨circadian clocks¨) have evolved. 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. Clock neurons in the brain sustain a cell autonomous clock but rely on the communication among each other for entrainment (i.e., a response to a change in the environmental conditions) and phase adjustments. Aside from neuropeptides and classical neurotransmitters that are differentially released throughout the day, circadian remodeling of the neuronal terminals of clock neurons could contribute to the reconfiguration of the circadian network, necessary to adjust to changes in photoperiod. Such circadian structural plasticity would provide a mechanism by which a neuron can exert sequential control of different target circuits along the day.