Inner watch controlls in all lifecycle of creatures the process of phisiologys and also there cautious. Now, an international Team of Researchers under the lead Researchers on University of Wurzburg has created an detailled Card of inner Watch on the Brain by an furit fly. Fruit flys to apply very simliar to humans functional.

Würzburg, Dezember, 5th, 2024. Perhaps it is ultimately dedicated to the clocking of the internal clock, which is why humans not only long for rituals and routines, but also why consciousness and the invention of time arose from this. All animals, including humans, have daily rhythms in their activity, sleep, hunger, metabolism and reproduction. The system that regulates these biological rhythms is known as the circadian clock. This clock controls all processes in the body within a 24-hour period.

In vertebrates, the central control unit, the ‘master clock’, is located in the brain in an area called the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN). This brain region is not only responsible for regulating and synchronising rhythms in the brain, but also controls other clocks in tissues throughout the body. It ensures that our body rhythms function in a coordinated manner; disruptions to this system can lead to sleep and metabolic disorders, among other things.



Publication in Nature Communications

In a study now published in the journal Nature Communications, a team of researchers from the University of Würzburg (Germany), University of Nevada, Reno (USA) and Okayama University (Japan) has created the first complete map of the circadian clock in the brain of the fly Drosophila. Dr Meet Zandawala, group leader at the Department of Neurobiology and Genetics at the University of Würzburg, and Nils Reinhard, doctoral student at the same department under Professor Charlotte Förster and Dr Dirk Rieger, were in charge of the project.

‘In vertebrates, there are around 20,000 neurons that form the master clock. Given this large number of neurons and the many connections they form within the brain, it is complicated to understand the interactions and how the clock network works,’ says Meet Zandwala, explaining the background to the study. To capture this complexity on a smaller scale, researchers are therefore using model organisms whose brains have already been mapped, such as that of the fruit fly Drosophila with almost 140,000 neurons.



A map of all connections in the fly brain

For Drosophila, an international research consortium has recently published a map of all connections between all neurons in the fly brain – the so-called connectome. ‘This freely accessible resource is the perfect basis for new discoveries in neuroscience and in particular for a better understanding of mechanisms such as the circadian clock,’ says Zandawala.

Together, the team has now used this brain connectome to identify all the neurons that make up the fly’s circadian clock. The result: ‘The internal clock in the Drosophila brain consists of at least 240 neurons, which is significantly more than the originally estimated 150. Some of the newly identified clock neurons also show characteristics that were originally only known from clock neurons in vertebrates. This means that the functioning of the internal clock between vertebrates and insects is much more similar than previously assumed,’ says Nils Reinhard. The new findings now enable the researchers to identify certain types of clock neurons that co-operate with each other and coordinate communication within the entire clock network.



Basis for new therapeutic approaches

Neurons in the clock network transmit time information to other brain regions that support learning and memory, orientation in space, motor control and hormone production and release. Now scientists can trace these pathways and find out how rhythmic behaviours such as feeding, sleep and reproduction as well as hormone release are coordinated.

This detailed mapping of the Drosophila clock network not only expands the understanding of how daily rhythms are generated, but also provides a basis for research into circadian dysregulations associated with diseases such as sleep or metabolic disorders. ‘These results give us a detailed framework for understanding how the brain controls daily cycles. They provide the basis for future therapeutic approaches to treat circadian health problems,’ says Meet Zandawala.

Translated togehter with DeepL_com

Originalpublication:

Synaptic connectome of the Drosophila circadian clock. Nils Reinhard, Ayumi Fukuda, Giulia Manoli, Emilia Derksen, Aika Saito, Gabriel Möller, Manabu Sekiguchi, Dirk Rieger, Charlotte Helfrich-Förster, Taishi Yoshii, Meet Zandawala. Nature Communications, DOI: 10.1038/s41467-024-54694-0

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