time keeping mechanism termed a circadian clock. Circadian clocks synchronize to environmental cycles in light and temperature and pass on time of day information to many rhythmic bodily functions and behaviors.

We are currently particularly interested in two separate properties of the circadian clock: (1) Its ability to connect to behavioral rhythms and (2) its ability to synchronize to environmental temperature cycles. Our experimental approach takes advantage of Drosophila as a powerful, convenient, and representative animal clock model. With the help of transgenic flies with conditional circadian clock function we are tracing the signaling pathways connecting the transcriptional clock circuits in the brain to sleep/wake rhythms. In addition, we are using genetic and molecular approaches to describe the mechanisms enabling temperature entrainment of the circadian clock.

Currie J, Goda T, Wijnen H. Selective entrainment of the Drosophila circadian clock to daily gradients in environmental temperature. BMC Biology 2009 vol 7(1):49.

Boothroyd CE, Wijnen H, Naef F, Saez L, Young MW. Integration of light and temperature in the regulation of circadian gene expression in Drosophila. PLoS Genet. 2007 Apr 6;3(4):e54

Wijnen H, Naef F, Boothroyd C, Claridge-Chang A, Young MW. Control of daily transcript oscillations in Drosophila by light and the circadian clock. PLoS Genet. 2006 Mar;2(3):e39. Epub 2006 Mar 24.

Wijnen H, Naef F, Young MW. Molecular and statistical tools for circadian transcript profiling. Methods Enzymol. 2005;393:341-65.

Claridge-Chang A, Wijnen H, Naef F, Boothroyd C, Rajewsky N, Young MW. Circadian regulation of gene expression systems in the Drosophila head. Neuron. 2001 Nov 20;32(4):657-71.