Harvard: Often referred to as the “body clock,” circadian rhythm controls what time of day people are most alert, hungry, tired or physically primed. However, this complex biological process is not unique to humans. Circadian rhythms,
Harvard: Often referred to as the “body clock,” circadian rhythm controls what time of day people are most alert, hungry, tired or physically primed. However, this complex biological process is not unique to humans. Circadian rhythms, which oscillate over a roughly 24-hour cycle in adaptation to the Earth’s rotation, have been observed in most of the planet’s plants, animals, fungi and cyanobacteria, and are responsible for regulating many aspects of organisms’ physiological, behavioral and metabolic functions.
Now, scientists led by biologist Pamela Silver
have harnessed the circadian mechanism found in cyanobacteria to
transplant the circadian wiring into a common species of bacteria that
is naturally non-circadian.
The novel work, which for the first time demonstrates the transplant of a circadian rhythm, is reported in a new study in Science Advances.
“By looking at systems in nature as modular, we think like engineers
to manipulate and use biological circuits in a predictable, programmable
way,” said Silver, who is the HMS Elliott T. and Onie H. Adams
Professor of Biochemistry and Systems Biology and a core faculty member
at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering.
Wyss Institute at Harvard University
Silver’s team used this methodology to successfully transplant a circadian rhythm into the bacterial species E. coli, which is widely used as a “workhorse” cell species by biologists because it is well understood and easy to genetically alter.
The genetically engineered circadian E. coli designed by
Silver could one day be used in probiotic pills as a way to monitor the
gut microbiota, the collective and diverse bacterial species that
flourish in the human gastrointestinal tract and contribute to many
To create a circadian rhythm in E. coli, the protein circuit
responsible for regulating circadian oscillations was modularly removed
from cyanobacteria, the only bacterial species known to naturally
contain a circadian rhythm.
The protein circuit was then transplanted into E. coli,
where it can be connected to additional gene expression components to
potentially influence metabolic and behavioral functions in relation to
the day-night cycle.
In the experimental E. coli, the circuit was linked to fluorescent proteins that lit up each time the circadian oscillations were triggered, causing the E. coli to glow rhythmically in a visual confirmation of the transplant’s success.
“The ultimate dream application would be to deliver these circadian E. coli
to an individual in pill form, which could allow the circadian rhythm
to be linked to additional biological circuits in order to perform a
precisely timed release of drugs, or to be able to sense and influence
the host’s circadian rhythm,” said the study’s first author, Anna Chen, a
systems biology graduate student at the Wyss and HMS.
The human circadian rhythm has been shown to impact metabolism,
which, when disturbed, can contribute to obesity and glucose
intolerance. What’s more, many drugs, including those commonly used to
treat various cancers, have been shown to fluctuate in their efficacy
based on the time of day and the point in a patient’s circadian cycle
when they are administered. Using circadian E. coli,
therapeutic strategies to influence a patient’s circadian rhythm or to
program drugs to release internally at a specific point in the patient’s
circadian rhythm could energize treatments for cancer and metabolic
diseases, among other clinical applications.
And further down the road, even the condition known a