Circadian Period Integrates Network Information Through Activation of the BMP Signaling Pathway

ESTEBAN J. BECKWITH, E. AXEL GOROSTIZA, JIMENA BERNI, CAROLINA REZAVAL, AGUSTıN PEREZ-SANTANGELO, ALEJANDRO D. NADRA, MARıA FERNANDA CERIANI

PLOS BIOLOGY

PUBLIC LIBRARY SCIENCE

Lugar: San Francisco; Año: 2013 p. 10017 - 10017

1544-9173

Living organisms use biological clocks to maintain their internal temporal order and anticipate daily environmental changes.In Drosophila, circadian regulation of locomotor behavior is controlled by ,150 neurons; among them, neurons expressingthe PIGMENT DISPERSING FACTOR (PDF) set the period of locomotor behavior under free-running conditions. To this date itremains unclear how individual circadian clusters integrate their activity to assemble a distinctive behavioral output. Herewe show that the BONE MORPHOGENETIC PROTEIN (BMP) signaling pathway plays a crucial role in setting the circadianperiod in PDF neurons in the adult brain. Acute deregulation of BMP signaling causes period lengthening throughregulation of dClock transcription, providing evidence for a novel function of this pathway in the adult brain. We proposethat coherence in the circadian network arises from integration in PDF neurons of both the pace of the cell-autonomousmolecular clock and information derived from circadian-relevant neurons through release of BMP ligands.