Manfred Eigen Lecture: Circadian regulation, gene expression and the fly brain

The mechanism and genes that underlies circadian timing are conserved in all animals, from fruit flies to humans, and include a conserved set of transcription-translation feedback loops. This system also governs a large fraction of all gene expression in many if not most tissues, which explains why so much animal physiology (biochemistry, metabolism, endocrinology, behavior, sleep, etc.) is under temporal control. A large fraction of my current research focuses on the Drosophila brain, where ~150 central brain “clock” neurons cells play a prominent role in orchestrating the fly sleep-wake cycle. These cells share the central clock timekeeping mechanism but are otherwise remarkably heterogeneous from a molecular profiling point of view. Neuronal heterogeneity may be a general feature of the tiny fly brain (100,000 neurons) and help explain how it can orchestrate such an impressive array of complex behaviors. Time permitting, I will also discuss an additional topic, one that bridges the identification of RNA-binding protein targets to issues of neuroscience interest.