Insights into daily metabolic changes of the dinoflagellate Lingulodinium from ribosome profiling

The dinoflagellate Lingulodinium specializes its metabolism to perform different tasks better at specific times of day. For example, cells are specialized for photosynthesis during the day and bioluminescence and cell division at night. These rhythms are circadian as they are controlled by an endogenous circadian clock whose mechanism is currently unknown. Despite this, the metabolic rhythms follow coordinated changes in gene expression that occur at a translational level. These changes are revealed by ribosome profiling, a surrogate measure of protein synthesis rates in vivo. Lingulodinium regulates the synthesis rate of over three thousand transcripts. Peak synthesis rates for the different transcripts are clustered around three different times over a light/dark cycle. Furthermore, transcripts involved in the same metabolic process are coordinately regulated. We review the basic principles underlying the correlation of coordinated translation of cell metabolic pathway enzymes with known circadian rhythms, and offer examples where previously unsuspected rhythms are suggested by synchronized changes in gene expression.