Abstract
By only mixing the cyanobacterial (Synechococcus elongatus PCC 7942) circadian clock proteins KaiC, KaiA, and KaiB with ATP in a test tube, the phosphorylation status of KaiC shows a circadian rhythm. The major component KaiC is a typical adenosine triphosphatase (ATPase). Although ATPase activity of KaiC is extremely low, the ATPase activity of KaiC by itself shows temperature compensation and correlates with the rate of circadian rhythm (oscillation frequency), indicating that it defines the temperature compensation and period of the circadian rhythm as a pacemaker. The Kai clock system based on this activity shows the existence of a completely novel circadian clock mechanism that does not require transcription/translation or molecular interactions, etc., which has been assumed so far for prokaryotic and eukaryotic organisms. In this chapter, we describe a model for the cyanobacterial circadian clock system that we have derived from our analyses of KaiC ATPase activity.
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Acknowledgment
This review summarizes our studies on the mechanisms of circadian rhythm generation based on the functions of KaiC ATPase that we have performed since around 2010 at Nagoya University. The results summarizing this study are now in preparation for submission as a paper, together with the results of a number of experiments supporting a coupling model of CI and CII. We thank Dr. Keiko Okano-Imai (Kansai Medical University), Dr. Yoriko Murayama (Waseda University), Dr. Naoki Takai (Tokyo Metropolitan Institute of Medical Science), and Dr. Tomoaki Muranaka (Kagoshima University), who contributed greatly to our analyses. This study was supported by JST CREST Grant number JPMJCR07O2 to T.K. and Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research (24000016 and 17H01427 to T.K).
Editor’s Note: For a complementary view on this chapter, please also see Takao Kondo’s chapter, “Around the Circadian Clock: Review 1 and Preview”.
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Ito-Miwa, K., Terauchi, K., Kondo, T. (2021). Mechanism of the Cyanobacterial Circadian Clock Protein KaiC to Measure 24 Hours. In: Johnson, C.H., Rust, M.J. (eds) Circadian Rhythms in Bacteria and Microbiomes. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72158-9_5
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