Abstract
A diverse range of organisms shows physiological and behavioural rhythms with various periods. Extensive studies have been performed to elucidate the molecular mechanisms of circadian rhythms with an approximately 24 h period in both Drosophila and mammals, while less attention has been paid to ultradian rhythms with shorter periods. We used a video-tracking method to monitor the movement of single flies, and clear ultradian rhythms were detected in the locomotor behaviour of wild type and clock mutant flies kept under constant dark conditions. In particular, the Pigment-dispersing factor mutant (Pdf 01) demonstrated a precise and robust ultradian rhythmicity, which was not temperature compensated. Our results suggest that Drosophila has an endogenous ultradian oscillator that is masked by circadian rhythmic behaviours.
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Acknowledgements
We thank the Bloomington Drosophila Stock Center, M Rosbash, JC Hall, and MW Young for fly strains. We also thank Kiyo Kimura and Kyoko Sakamoto for technical help. This work was supported by a grant from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology of Japan and a grant from the Naito Foundation, Japan to TT. I would like to dedicate this paper to the memory of Dr Obaid Siddiqi. We walked along the neurogenetics research of Drosophila for the past years in India and Japan.
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[Seki Y and Tanimura T 2014 Ultradian rhythm unmasked in the Pdf clock mutant of Drosophila. J. Biosci. 39 1–10] DOI 10.1007/s12038-014-9450-z
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Seki, Y., Tanimura, T. Ultradian rhythm unmasked in the Pdf clock mutant of Drosophila . J Biosci 39, 585–594 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12038-014-9450-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12038-014-9450-z