Biological Rhythms, SNEHA LAL
Biological Rhythms, SNEHA LAL
Biological Rhythms, SNEHA LAL
RHYTHMS
Presented by
SNEHA LAL
1st M.Sc Zoology
INTRODUCTION
■ Most living things are exposed to the rhythms of the solar system.
■ Because the earth revolves around the sun with regularity, rotates at a constant
rate on its tilted axis and has a predictable and recurring position in relation to
moon, life on earth is subjected to cyclic fluctuation in its environment.
■ Animal behaviour too exhibits a marked periodicity in its pattern of
performance because during the course of their evolution have acquired a
variety of endogenous rhythms or biological clocks whose periods are
matched with those of rhythmic events in the environment.
■ A rhythm has been defined as a sequence of events that repeat themselves through time
in the same order and the same interval. Simply a rhythm is a periodically recurring
event.
■ Biological rhythms are an integral part of every day life for most organisms on earth.
They regulate most important functions in each organism.
■ Biological clock enables organisms to determine how and when to respond to daily,
seasonal, annual and lunar periodicities. This ability depends on the fact that certain
phenomena of life show regular and cyclic periodicity.
■ In plants circadian clocks control flowering, response to seasons and photosynthesis.
■ In mammals, circadian clocks manage sleeping, waking, feeding and controlling.
■ Consequently, some rhythms of organisms are matched to the daily or 24-hour cycle
(circadian rhythm), others to the tidal cycle (circatidal rhythm), the 29-day lunar cycle
(circalunar rhythm), the yearly seasons (circa annual rhythm).
■ The remarkable thing about these rhythms is that they persist even when the
environment cues (zeitgebers) to which they are entrained are artificially excluded.
They therefore seem to form a time base for behaviour or “biological clock” within the
animal.
■ Such a biological clock is assumed as analogous to human-made (physical clock) while
appears to be integrated functional network of some structure located in ‘higher’ centres
of animals,
BIOLOGICAL RHYTHMS
■ Many behavioural activities of animals occur at regular intervals.
■ This regularity and rhythmicity in the activities of organisms is known as biological rhythm
(biorhythm) or biological periodicity.
■ Courtship displays, nesting habits and migration of birds, aestivation and hibernation of
mammals, diapause in insects, etc are examples of biological rhythms.
■ The time interval between activities varies with species and the nature of the activity.
■ In many cases, the major external factor that regulates bioperiodicity is photoperiod.
■ The relative duration of the light and dark periods of a day, which may favour the optimum
functioning of organisms, is known as photoperiod.
■ The term photophase and scatophase are sometimes used to denote the period of light and
the period of darkness respectively.
■ Biorhythms, involving an internal clock or pacemaker system, does
not require any environmental input to maintain its periodicity are
called endogenous rhythms. It is self-sustaining oscillator but it may
be entrained by environmental information.
■ Rhythms that depend on environmental stimuli are called exogenous
rhythms
■ Free-running rhythms - An endogenous rhythm which is not entrained
by any environmental information demonstrating its period
spontaneously under constant conditions is known as free running
rhythm.
■ Zeitgeber - It is a German term, zeit - time; geber - giver. Zeitgeber is
a periodic environmental factor that entrain the biological rhythm.
■ Entrainment is a process by which an endogenous rhythm (biological
clock) is linked with an external geophysical rhythm
■ Biological clocks can be termed as an organism’s natural timing
devices, they regulate several cycles. There are several rhythms that
are matched to form a cycle.
■ The study of biological clock or biological rhythm are called
chronobiology.
■ The knowledge of biological clock is ancient , first hold by
Androsthenes about leaves of Tamarindes indicus. He reported that the
tamarind tree, opened its leaves during the day and closed them at
night.
■ Various biorhythms are:-
■ Circadian rhythm (24 hr cycle)
■ Circatidal rhythm (tidal cycle)
■ Circalunar rhythm (lunar cycle of 29days)
■ Circa-annual rhythm (Annual cycle)
STRUCTURE AND LOCATION OF
BIOLOGICAL CLOCK
■ In 1972, Stephen & Zucker, later Moore in 1974 have demonstrated that the biological
clock is neural and that in mammals the probable site of it is the suprachiasmatic nucleus
(SCN) of the hypothalamus.
■ The SCN is a pair of cell clusters in the hypothalamus that receive inputs from nerve
fibers originating in the retina.
■ In mammals, SCN lesions lead to complete destruction of circadian rhythm.
■ The experiments on Hamsters & Norway rats have proved that SCN may contain the
master clock mechanism in these animals.
■ In some mammals, the SCN of hypothalamus contains the central pacemaker that signals
to the pineal gland. The pineal gland cyclically changes its production of melatonin with
adjustments for shifts in photoperiod length integrating the environment independent &
environment dependent elements that regulate daily changes in the behavior.
FUNCTIONAL IMPORTANCE OF
BIOLOGICAL CLOCKS
■ Bed bugs are nocturnal predators. Their activity rhythm coincides
with the diurnal habit of the humans; they are active from sunset
to sunrise, a period that is rest period of humans.
■ Filarial worms (Wuchereria bancrofti) infest the human lymphatic
system. The worms increase in number during night and vanish
from blood during day. If the infested person changes its habit,
from diurnal to nocturnal, the worm will change its periodicity
accordingly.
■ Eclosion activity in Drosophila takes place before dawn so as to
coincide the emergence of the adult at the optimum humidity level
in environment and at low temperature.
■ Development of the timing mechanism sets a predator to hunt
when the prey is most active.
■ Related species living on same diet feed at different hours of day
to avoid competition
CIRCADIAN RHYTHM
■ Franz Halberg, an American ethologist in 1959 coined the term circadian
(Latin: circa about; dies day) for repeating pattern of activity that runs about
24 hours in length.
■ Circadian rhythm is the regularity and rhythmicity or periodicity in the
approximately 24-hourly day-to-day routine biological activities or behaviour
of living organisms
■ Regularly occurring daily cycle of light (day) and darkness (night) have been
known to exert a far-reaching influence on the behaviour and metabolism of
many organisms.
■ In a natural habitat, the rhythm is 24-hourly. But, in constant conditions, it
becomes slightly longer or shorter than 24 hours.
■ Circadian rhythm is believed to be controlled by an endogenous biological
clock. They are adjusted to the local environment by external cues called
zeitgebers.
■ Circadian rhythm influences various regulatory functions, including the sleep-wake
cycle, body temperature regulation, patterns of activity such as eating and drinking, and
hormonal and neurotransmitter secretion.
■ There are three main types of circadian rhythms, namely diurnal, nocturnal and
crepuscular rhythms.
■ Animals are not active continuously throughout each 24-hour period. Some such as
birds and butterflies are most active during the daylight hours. These are called diurnal
animals.
■ Other animals such as crickets, cockroaches and many insects, owls and bats are active
at night; they are called noctural animals.
■ There are still certain species such as rabbits which reserve their active times for the
twilight hours of the day, in early morning (dawn) and early evening(dusk) .These
animals are called crepscular animals
EXAMPLES
■ De Coursey (1960) provided an experimental proof of existence of a circadian rhythm in flying
squirrel (Glaucomys volans) in the form of its wheel-running activity.
■ Flying squirrel had been entrained to a 24-hour light/dark cycle and was then kept in continuous
darkness.
■ It shows the remarkable precision in the onset and cessation of wheel running in the complete
absence of the environmental cues to which it is related. It also shows that like the most
circadian clocks, the squirrel’s clock is not calibrated to exactly 24-hours. Wheel-running
started slightly earlier each day.
■ Sleep wake cycle – During the day, light exposure causes the master clock to send signals
that generate alertness and help keep us awake and active. As night falls, the master clock
initiates the production of melatonin, a hormone that promotes sleep, and then keeps
transmitting signals that help us stay asleep through the night
■ Jet lag – It is a circadian rhythm sleep disorder, meaning it involves disruption to a person’s
body clock and sleep. People, who move from one time zone to another quickly suffer from Jet
lag. It is due to the functioning of the free-running sleep-awake cycle according to the time
schedule of the zone one has left.
■ As for example, New Delhi and New York are two different time
zones having almost 12 hours difference. When it is 12 AM in New
Delhi, it is 12 PM in New York (of previous day). When a person
undertakes a fast journey from New Delhi to New York, his day and
night are simply reversed. In New York, he will feel sleepy at 12
noon (because it is midnight in New Delhi) and will remain awake
at 12 PM (because it is midnoon at New Delhi). But the effect will
be temporary, after a few day of staying at New York, the sleep-
awake clock of the person will be reset or entrained by the local
time schedule.
■ Algae and phytoplankton photosynthesize during the daylight hours
in the upper regions of a lake or ocean. At midday, when the
sunlight is most intense, many mobile zooplankton are well below
the surface. As darkness approaches, these creatures swim upward
to feed upon the phytoplankton and each other. They sink back into
deep waters after sunrise.
■ Female crickets usually hide in burrow or under litter during the
day and move about only after dusk, when it is relatively safe to
search for mates. In response, male Teleogryllus crickets start
calling to attract mates in the evening of each day
CONDITIONS FOR CIRCADIAN
RHYTHM
■ A set of five conditions are essential for the occurence of circadian rhythm . They are
generally called Pittendrigh conditions or Pittendrigh rules -:
■ The period of the rhythm should not be exactly 24 hours. This is because it should
exactly correspond to the prevailing oscillations in environmental conditions.
1. The rhythm must continue under normal environmental conditions.
2. The phase of the rhythm should be liable to be shifted and the subsequent new phase
should be retained under uniform environmental conditions.
3. The rhythm must be elicited by a single stimulus.
4. The phase of the rhythm should be delayed under anaerobic or hypoxic conditions.
CIRCANNUAL RHYTHM
■ Activity rhythms of organisms, which occur with a period of about one year
(365 days), in the absence of environmental cycles are named as circannual
rhythm. These result from the rotation of the earth around the sun
■ Annual periodicity in reproductive cycles have been observed in many insects,
fishes, birds and mammals.
■ For example, in its natural habitat the ‘carpet’ beetle Anthrenus verbasci feeds
on the organic matter in old birds nests and takes one, two or even three year to
complete its development.
■ Blake (1959) showed that the development of this insect comprised successive
periods of diapause and growth.
■ Many insects have two phases in their larval, pupal or adult stage
■ One is phase of activity(growth) and another is diapause, a period of arrested
growth and development.
■ Reproduction in seasonally breeding animals, migration in birds and other
animals, hibernation and aestivation are clear examples of circannual rhythms
in an kingdom.
EXAMPLES
■ Among birds, circannual rhythm is shown by warblers and
white crowned sparrows.
■ Among mammals, circannual rhythms control activity and
hibernation cycles, e.g. Hedgehog (Erinaceus europaeus),
rodents, ground squirrels (Spermophilus spp.) and chipmunks
(Eutamias).
■ The life-span of Siberian chipmunks (Eutamias sibirium) is
affected by their ability and inability to undergo hiberation:
those who undergo hibernation cycles live about 11 years, and
those failing to do so, live a reduced life-span of about 3 years
■ In circannual cycle of the golden-mantled ground squirrel.
Animals held in constant darkness and light and at a constant
temperature they hibernate year after year almost at the same
time their wild relatives did.
CIRCALUNAR RHYTHM
■ Rhythmic activities of organisms based on approximately a
lunar month (29.5 days) or cyclic phases of moon are called
circalunar rhythm
■ Circalunar and circasemilunar rhythms are widespread
among organisms, especially in the context of reproductive
cycles of marine animals.
■ Circasemilunar Rhythm – Some seashore animals show
semilunar rhythm which are synchronised with fortnightly
cycle of spring and neap tides.
■ The periwinkle (Littorina), a marine gastropod shows a
marked 15-day periodicity in its locomotory activity. The
species lives high up on the shore and is only covered by the
high water of spring tides.
■ Sea hares (Aplysia)- another gastropod, show a distinct 15
day periodicity in egg laying behavior.
EXAMPLES
■ The annelid palolo worm (Eunice viridis) of the Pacific Ocean
reproductive activity occurs only during neap tides of the last
quarter moon in October and November.
■ The palolo worms live in tunnels in the coral reef and their
posterior parts, containing the genital organs, become detached
from the anterior parts, swim to surface of the water, where they
swarm and release eggs and sperms.
■ Fertilization occurs and new individuals formed return to the coral
reef below after a few days of development.
■ The Mediterranean polychaete Platynereis dumerlii, an inhabitant
of sea bottom transforms into its sexual phase called heteronereis.
The people on the Fiji Islands know when these annelid worms
swarm, they catch them with nets to eat at feasts. Platynereis
perform their swarming activity during the days around the new
moon and during swarming worms release their gametes and then
die.
■ The California grunion is a small fish that seasonally spawn at
high tides. The females, pursued by the males, ride to the beach,
bury their tails in the sand and deposit their eggs a few
centimetres below the surface.
■ While a female is depositing her eggs, one or more males
encircle her and release sperm, which flow down the wet side of
the female and fertilize the eggs. All fish return to the ocean on
the next sweep of a high wave.
■ The buried eggs are thus protected from the dangers of the sea
until the next spring tide, a month later, brings high seas to carry
the young out to sea.
■ Lunar rhythms are also known in terrestrial animals. For
example, pit-building activity in the insect-ant lion (Myrmelon
obscurus) whose larvae are called doodlebugs reaches a peak at
around full moon. Lunar rhythms are characteristics of many
insect species from Placopters, Ephenaeroptera, Lepidoptera,
Diptera and Trichoptera.
■ Menstruation cycle of women having a periodicity of 28 days is
an important biological rhythm and an example circalunar
rhythm
CIRCATIDAL RHYTHM
■ Biological rhythms that occur approximately with high and low tide in the sea,
are circatidal rhythms.
■ Tides are sea water movements which are caused by some astronomical factor,
due to gravitational pull of moon and sun. They represent a rhythmic rise and fall
of water level and often waves of long wavelengths characterize the process.
■ In a lunar day two tides occur at about 12.4 h difference. These two tidal floods
may or may not be of the same height depending on the position of moon in
relation to earth.
■ If the moon is at equator, the tides will be at the same height but if it is north or
south of the equator the height of the two tides will be unequal
■ Tidal rhythms - These are common in marine animals and have periods extending
between two tides (12-4 h apart) and occur in animals exposed to tidal floods.
■ Any organism living in the intertidal zone of the sea shore are alternately submerged by
water and exposed to air. This results in change of several types of environmental
factors such as pressure, salinity, food supply, temperature, predation risks, etc.
■ A French scientist, Charles Bohn first described tidal periodicity in Convoluta
rescoffensis, an intertidal flat worm.
■ Further studies on tidal rhythms were performed by M.K. Chandrashekaran, F.H.
Bornwell and H.W. Honegger.
TYPES OF TIDES
1. Diurnal tides - A diurnal tide is characterized by one high and one low tide per lunar day. Such
tides occur in the Gulf of Mexico. These tides result when moon revolves the earth over the
equator.
2. Semidiurnal tides - One tidal height is greater than that of the other tide. Such tides occur in
Atlantic Ocean, North Sea and Indian Ocean. These tides are caused when moon revolves the
earth the north or south of the equator.
3. Mixed tides - This type of tides is characterized by the occurrence of tides of unequal strength in
indefinite spatial and temporal pattern. They occur in Pacific Ocean, Australian Coasts,
Carribbean and Arabian Seas.
4. Spring tides - They are extreme tides and occur when the earth, moon and sun come in a line (ie.,
the gravitational pull of sun and moon work together). Thus, spring tides occur two times in a
lunar month-one at the time of new moon and another at the full moon time.
5. Weak neap tides – They occur at first and quarters of the month when positions of earth, moon
and sun is set at right angles. In this case due to right angle arrangement the gravitational pulls of
the sun and moon work against each other.
EXAMPLES
■ Intertidal organisms show behavioral periodicity associated with tides.
■ Coelenterates like sea-anemones expand their body columns and
tentacles during high tide to entrap more food from tidal water.
■ Polychaete worms that live in the burrows in intertidal zone show
vertical movement as high tide approach.
■ Similarly, bivalves increase their filtration rate when high tide brings
more food.
■ In an experiment of Palmer (1973), shore crabs (Carcinus maenas)
were raised in the laboratory from eggs to adulthood under a day-night
regime without tidal influences, they showed only a circadian rhythm
of activity.
■ However, a tidal rhythm appeared after the crabs were given a cold-
shock treatment. It seemed that the endogenous tidal clock had been
dormant until started by the cold shock.
■ Fiddler crab show tidal rhythm of activity, the crabs
emerge from their burrows at low tide and actively forage,
court, etc. As the tide floods, they retreat back into their
burrows.
■ Soldier cab (Mictyris) is an air breathing crab living on
seashore. They can predict the arrival of high tide and start
building a shelter – a crater.
■ They push pellets of soft and wet muddy sand on either side
until they have built a roof over their heads. Then they
burrow deeper, as a result, more loose sand are plastered
overhead to form a tough roof.
■ Within the crater the crabs live against tidal water and also
from predator fishes. Crater building activity of solder crabs
is associated with tide hence an excellent example of
circatidal rhythm.
GENETICS OF BIOLOGICAL
RHYTHMS
■ The genetic basis for rhythms generation was made by Ronald Konopka and Seymour
Benzer, they identified the first clock mutation in Drosophila in 1971.
■ They identified three mutant Drosophila having abnormal circadian rhythm pattern or
24 hr cycle in certain activities like pupil eclosion and locomotor activity
■ A common mutated gene is identified in all three flies.
■ This is the first gene discovered named as period (PER) gene and was cloned and
sequenced by Jeffrey Hall and Michael Rosbash and Michael Young.
■ Period gene is transcribed to form period mRNA
■ The PER mRNA is transported to the cell's cytoplasm and serves as template for the
production of PER protein.
■ Accumulation of period protein inside the nucleus represses the expression of period
gene. This give rise to a negative feedback mechanism.
■ Later another protein discovered called TIM protein coded by timeless gene that can
directly bind to PER protein.
■ These two proteins were able to enter the cell nucleus where they blocked period gene
activity to close the inhibitory feedback loop
■ PER and TIM genes are activated due to the two proteins - clock (clk) protein and cycle
(cyc) protein.
■ They can interact with each other and and bind to specific site in the period and timeless
genes, thereby positively regulating their transcription.
■ What controlled the frequency of oscillations ?
■ Another gene doubletime(DBT), encoding the DBT protein that delayed the
accumulation of the PER protein.
■ As the sun rises, light causes a conformational (shape) change in the
cryptochrome(CRY) protein, thereby activating it.
■ Activated cryptochrome interacts with TIM, causing it to degrade.
■ Without the stabilization provided by TIM, PER proteins become susceptible to
degradation by the doubletime protein in the nucleus.
■ Absence of PER and TIM allows activation of clk and cyc genes. Thus, the clock is
reset to start the next circadian cycle
MAMMALIAN CIRCADIAN
RHYTHM
■ Endogenous cyclic gene expression patterns are driven by the activity of a core
transcription\translation feedback loop (TTFL).
■ This mechanism consists of a forward arm that drives gene expression and a negative
arm that feeds back and inhibits the activity of the forward arm
■ The forward portion of the feedback loop is composed of transcription factors
resulting in autoregulatory transcription-translation feedback loops (TTFLs) that bind
specific segments of DNA called response elements.
■ A central role in the regulation of this loop is played by the heterodimeric partnership
between two transcription factors, i.e. The brain and muscle Arnt-like protein 1
(BMAL1) and the circadian locomotor output cycles kaput (CLOCK).
■ Transcription of BMAL1 and CLOCK genes, leads to the heterodimerization in the
cytoplasm of the BMAL1:CLOCK complex, which translocates into the nucleus
where it binds to Enhancer Box (E-Box)
■ BMAL1 and CLOCK also promote the expression of the components of the negative arm of
the molecular clock, such as period (PER1, PER2, PER3) and cryptochrome (CRY1, CRY2).
■ PER and CRY form a complex in the cytoplasm that translocates into the nucleus.
■ Following their translation and nuclear accumulation, PER and CRY inhibit the
transcriptional activity of BMAL1:CLOCK complex.
■ At post-transcriptional level, the stability of PER and CRY proteins is regulated by Skp1-
Cullin-F-box protein (SCF) E3 ubiquitin ligase complexes, involving β-TrCP (β-Transducin
Repeat Containing E3 Ubiquitin Protein Ligase) and F-Box and Leucine Rich Repeat
Protein 3 (FBXL3), respectively.
■ The casein kinase 1ε/δ (CK1ε/δ) and adenosine 3’,5’-monophosphate (AMP) kinase
(AMPK) phosphorylate PER and CRY proteins, respectively, thus promoting
polyubiquitination by their respective E3 ubiquitin ligase complexes, which tag PER and
CRY proteins for degradation by the 26 S proteasome complex.
■ Decrease in PER and CRY protein levels relieves the suppression of BMAL1:CLOCK
activity, thereby permitting to establish a new oscillatory cycle
■ Further key regulators of the circadian clock, such as the nuclear receptors REV-ERBα
(also known as nuclear receptor subfamily 1, group D, member 1, NR1D1) and REV-
ERBβ (also known as nuclear receptor subfamily 1, group D, member 2, NR1D2)
■ REV-ERBs, as well as the retinoic acid orphan receptor (ROR) (RORα, RORβ, and
RORγ) establish another feedback loop.
■ In particular, while REV-ERBs act as transcriptional repressors of BMAL1 expression,
RORs positively regulate the expression of BMAL1 by binding to sites Retinoic acid
receptor-related Orphan Receptor Element (RORE) elements in the BMAL1 gene
promoter.
CONCLUSION
■ A rhythm has been defined as a sequence of events that repeat themselves through time
in the same order and the same interval. Simply a rhythm is a periodically recurring
event.
■ Many behavioural activities of animals occur at regular intervals. This regularity and
rhythmicity in the activities of organisms is known as biological rhythm (biorhythm) or
biological periodicity.
■ Circadian rhythm – Rhythmic animal behaviors that appear to be organized on a 24-
hour cycle is called circadian (circa about; dies day).
■ Circannual rhythm – Activity rhythms of organisms, which occur with a period of about
one year(365 days)
■ Circalunar rhythm – Rhythmic activities of organisms based on approximately a lunar
month (29 days)
■ Circatidal rhythm – Biological rhythms that occur approximately with high and low tide
in the sea, are circatidal rhythms.
REFERENCES
1. Ethology, evolution, zoogeography, toxicology by K K Bhskaran – P K Sumodan,
Mohammed Rafeeq
2. Evolution, adaptation, ethology by Sanjib Chattopadhyay since 1960
3. Animal behaviour (ethology) by Dr V K agarwal published by S Chand
4. Genetics of circadian rhythms, ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles
5. Concepts in human biological rhythms, Researchgate.net
6. Chronobiology: the dimension of time in biology and medicine by Atanu Kumar Bati
7. The discoveries for molecular mechanisms by Rong Chi Haung
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