Nutritional entrainment of circadian rhythms under alignment and misalignment: A mechanistic review

The rising prevalence of obesity is a major international concern and is associated with a substantial burden of disease. Disrupted circadian behaviours, including late and extended eating patterns, are identified as risk factors for obesity. The circadian rhythm synchronises metabolic functions between and within tissues, optimising physiology to integrate with environmental and behavioural cycles. Cellular circadian rhythms also separate poorly compatible processes and enable adaptive integration of energy metabolism with autophagy. The timing of nutritional input is a key and easily controllable variable that influences circadian function. Misalignment of nutritional input with the centrally generated circadian rhythm may dampen and disrupt circadian metabolic function. This review seeks to provide a mechanistic overview of nutritional circadian entrainment and its downstream metabolic effects. The aims are: to characterise the key cellular and physiological mechanisms involved in the nutritional entrainment of circadian rhythms; and to explore the perturbation of these pathways by misaligned nutritional inputs, with relevance to obesity-associated dysmetabolism.

A systematic two-tranche search strategy was employed. Searches were conducted within PubMed between March and December 2020. Included studies were formally evaluated for quality. Evidence was extracted and coded into key themes.

142 records were screened and 50 accepted. The evidence analysed was moderate-to-high quality and enabled the detailed characterisation of cellular pathways involved in nutritional circadian entrainment. Results indicated that diverse nutritional input pathways converge upon key nutrient/redox sensors and nutritionally sensitive core clock genes, which integrate with circadian metabolic pathways, allowing bidirectional communication between circadian clock function and metabolism. Versus alignment, nutritional misalignment was causally associated with dampening and alteration of core clock rhythms, between-tissue rhythmic decoupling, dysmetabolism, and obesity. Signalling through key circadian nodes, such as NAD⁺/SIRT, was indicated to have importance in these metabolic changes. Misaligned nutritional inputs were associated with altered core circadian temporal dynamics of metabolism and autophagy, and different time division between insulin-sensitive and insulin-resistant metabolic states. Time-restricted feeding protocols aligned with the natural circadian rhythm (light-dark cycle) relatively strengthened circadian oscillatory patterns and protected against diet-induced obesity.

This review suggests potential value in further investigating circadian-normalising nutritional interventions for obesity, such as circadian-aligned time-restricted feeding.