Spinning the Spatiotemporal Profile of Transcription Factors Via Intermittent Fasting

Intermittent fasting is a safe strategy to improve health, but its specific mechanisms are not fully understood. Considering that transcription factors (TFs) determine the response to environmental signals, here, we profiled the circadian transcriptome of 600 samples in mice to provide an atlas of TFs in biological space, time, and feeding regimen. Results showed that 80% of TFs display daily rhythms in expression. Intermittent fasting triggered more than 90% of TFs to oscillate somewhere in the body and repartitioned their tissue-specific expression. A single round of fasting and repeated fasting caused evidently different effects on TFs. Intriguingly, 196 TFs illustrated a duration-dependent linear correlation in expression with fasting or refeeding time at the cutoff of the determination coefficient (R2) in linear regression > 0.7. This atlas offers a reference and resource to understand how TFs and intermittent fasting may contribute to circadian rhythm oscillation and bring about specific health benefits.