She says that there is a comparable mechanism in Drosophila: "The compound eyes, the extraretinal Hofbauer-Buchner eyelets and the circadian photoreceptor cryptochrome all work together in the light synchronisation process," the professor summarises the central result of the recently published study. "In mammals, a combination of the traditional photoreceptor pathway (rods and cones of the retina) and the circadian photoreceptor melanopsin in retinal ganglion cells enables the fine-tuning of clock synchronisation," Charlotte Förster explains. They present the results of their research in the current issue of Current Biology.
Chair holder, Charlotte Förster, together with her former colleague Matthias Schlichting, who presently works at Brandeis University (Massachusetts, USA), have now figured out new and surprising details of this interaction. Scientists from the Department of Neurobiology and Genetics at the University of Würzburg have been researching the interaction of light, photoreceptors and circadian clocks in the fruit fly for some time.
Light is the most important zeitgeber the fly uses for this. For the fruit fly to adapt to changing day-and-night rhythms, its circadian clock must be able to process external cues, so-called zeitgebers, which are used to synchronise the molecular and physiological properties of the organism.
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