BITTMAN RECEIVES EXPLORATORY GRANT TO STUDY BRAIN’S MASTER CLOCK

Neurobiologist Eric Bittman, biology, has received a two-year, $420,000 exploratory grant from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke to study how the master clock in the brain talks to other neurons and how it controls a variety of organs including the heart, lung and liver.

Circadian rhythms are internally generated cycles that repeat at 24-hour intervals in the normal, fluctuating environment but which persist with a slightly shorter or longer period in constant conditions, he explains. Many physiological events, including body temperature, sleep and wakefulness, heart rate and blood pressure show circadian rhythms. Other events that recur at longer intervals, including reproductive cycles, are based on the daily circadian clock.

Although the brain has a master pacemaker located in the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) of the hypothalamus, every cell in the body also has an autonomous circadian clock, Bittman says. “What attracts my attention is how the body manages to coordinate these many rhythms in the lung, the liver, the heart and in other muscles, how enzymes and genes interact as control mechanisms and how one little part of the hypothalamus keeps everything running on time.”

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