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Updated: May 16, 2026

Parallel Measurement of Circadian Clock Gene Expression and Hormone Secretion in Human Primary Cell Cultures
Published on: November 11, 2016
Circadian topology of metabolism
1Department of Medicine, Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, Chicago, Illinois 60611, USA. j-bass@northwestern.edu
Abstract:
Biological clocks are genetically encoded oscillators that allow organisms to anticipate changes in the light-dark environment that are tied to the rotation of Earth. Clocks enhance fitness and growth in prokaryotes, and they are expressed throughout the central nervous system and peripheral tissues of multicelled organisms in which they influence sleep, arousal, feeding and metabolism. Biological clocks capture the imagination because of their tie to geophysical time, and tools are now in hand to analyse their function in health and disease at the cellular and molecular level.
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