Rethinking transcriptional activation in the Arabidopsis circadian clock.
Circadian clocks are biological timekeepers that allow living cells to time their activity in anticipation of predictable daily changes in light and other environmental factors. The complexity of the circadian clock in higher plants makes it difficult to understand the role of individual genes or mo...
| Main Authors: | , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Public Library of Science (PLoS)
2014-07-01
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| Series: | PLoS Computational Biology |
| Online Access: | http://europepmc.org/articles/PMC4102396?pdf=render |
| _version_ | 1828190773960507392 |
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| author | Karl Fogelmark Carl Troein |
| author_facet | Karl Fogelmark Carl Troein |
| author_sort | Karl Fogelmark |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | Circadian clocks are biological timekeepers that allow living cells to time their activity in anticipation of predictable daily changes in light and other environmental factors. The complexity of the circadian clock in higher plants makes it difficult to understand the role of individual genes or molecular interactions, and mathematical modelling has been useful in guiding clock research in model organisms such as Arabidopsis thaliana. We present a model of the circadian clock in Arabidopsis, based on a large corpus of published time course data. It appears from experimental evidence in the literature that most interactions in the clock are repressive. Hence, we remove all transcriptional activation found in previous models of this system, and instead extend the system by including two new components, the morning-expressed activator RVE8 and the nightly repressor/activator NOX. Our modelling results demonstrate that the clock does not need a large number of activators in order to reproduce the observed gene expression patterns. For example, the sequential expression of the PRR genes does not require the genes to be connected as a series of activators. In the presented model, transcriptional activation is exclusively the task of RVE8. Predictions of how strongly RVE8 affects its targets are found to agree with earlier interpretations of the experimental data, but generally we find that the many negative feedbacks in the system should discourage intuitive interpretations of mutant phenotypes. The dynamics of the clock are difficult to predict without mathematical modelling, and the clock is better viewed as a tangled web than as a series of loops. |
| first_indexed | 2024-04-12T08:27:14Z |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-2ad8b3a85f7443e58c850d8780828ff8 |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 1553-734X 1553-7358 |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-04-12T08:27:14Z |
| publishDate | 2014-07-01 |
| publisher | Public Library of Science (PLoS) |
| record_format | Article |
| series | PLoS Computational Biology |
| spelling | doaj.art-2ad8b3a85f7443e58c850d8780828ff82022-12-22T03:40:19ZengPublic Library of Science (PLoS)PLoS Computational Biology1553-734X1553-73582014-07-01107e100370510.1371/journal.pcbi.1003705Rethinking transcriptional activation in the Arabidopsis circadian clock.Karl FogelmarkCarl TroeinCircadian clocks are biological timekeepers that allow living cells to time their activity in anticipation of predictable daily changes in light and other environmental factors. The complexity of the circadian clock in higher plants makes it difficult to understand the role of individual genes or molecular interactions, and mathematical modelling has been useful in guiding clock research in model organisms such as Arabidopsis thaliana. We present a model of the circadian clock in Arabidopsis, based on a large corpus of published time course data. It appears from experimental evidence in the literature that most interactions in the clock are repressive. Hence, we remove all transcriptional activation found in previous models of this system, and instead extend the system by including two new components, the morning-expressed activator RVE8 and the nightly repressor/activator NOX. Our modelling results demonstrate that the clock does not need a large number of activators in order to reproduce the observed gene expression patterns. For example, the sequential expression of the PRR genes does not require the genes to be connected as a series of activators. In the presented model, transcriptional activation is exclusively the task of RVE8. Predictions of how strongly RVE8 affects its targets are found to agree with earlier interpretations of the experimental data, but generally we find that the many negative feedbacks in the system should discourage intuitive interpretations of mutant phenotypes. The dynamics of the clock are difficult to predict without mathematical modelling, and the clock is better viewed as a tangled web than as a series of loops.http://europepmc.org/articles/PMC4102396?pdf=render |
| spellingShingle | Karl Fogelmark Carl Troein Rethinking transcriptional activation in the Arabidopsis circadian clock. PLoS Computational Biology |
| title | Rethinking transcriptional activation in the Arabidopsis circadian clock. |
| title_full | Rethinking transcriptional activation in the Arabidopsis circadian clock. |
| title_fullStr | Rethinking transcriptional activation in the Arabidopsis circadian clock. |
| title_full_unstemmed | Rethinking transcriptional activation in the Arabidopsis circadian clock. |
| title_short | Rethinking transcriptional activation in the Arabidopsis circadian clock. |
| title_sort | rethinking transcriptional activation in the arabidopsis circadian clock |
| url | http://europepmc.org/articles/PMC4102396?pdf=render |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT karlfogelmark rethinkingtranscriptionalactivationinthearabidopsiscircadianclock AT carltroein rethinkingtranscriptionalactivationinthearabidopsiscircadianclock |