Advances in study of circadian clock mechanism

Circadian rhythms, generated by cell autonomous biological clocks internally, is one ofthe focuses in life science in recent years. Some clock-related genes in several model organisms,such as cyanobacteria, Neurospora, Am4idopsis, Drosophila and mousem, are cloned and identifiedin succession. This is the basis of understanding the molecular circadian clock mechanism. Thegeneral meChanism in different organisms is probably that oscillator proteins use distinct modesof regulation in different cell types to achieve the negative feedback on their gene transcription.Cryptochrome may be the clock photoreceptor shared by plants and animals.