First name,Last name,Preferred title,Overview,Position,Department,Individual
Deborah,Bell-Pedersen,Professor,"Research in the Bell-Pedersen lab focuses on determining how the circadian clock functions in organisms to regulate daily rhythms in gene expression, behavior, and physiology. The molecular clock in higher eukaryotes involves a master clock in the brain regulating clocks in peripheral tissues, posing significant obstacles for understanding circadian output mechanisms. Thus, a major strength of our work is using a single-celled model eukaryote, Neurospora crassa, to elucidate the underlying mechanisms of rhythmic gene expression and protein synthesis. Clock dysfunction in humans is associated with a wide range of diseases, including cardiovascular disease, cancer, metabolic disorders, mental illness, sleep disorders, and aging. In addition, daily changes in metabolism and cell division rates influence the efficacy and toxicity of many pharmaceuticals, including cancer drugs. Therefore, knowing how clocks work to control rhythmic gene expression, and what they regulate, is critical for the development of therapeutics. Research to understand clock-controlled rhythmic gene expression has focused primarily on transcriptional mechanisms, and little was known about posttranscriptional control. We discovered that the clock regulates highly conserved translation initiation and elongation factors, tRNA synthetase levels, and ribosome heterogeneity. This regulation determines what mRNAs are rhythmically translated and the accuracy of the translation process (translation fidelity). We are capitalizing on these exciting discoveries to determine how the clock regulates translation fidelity. These studies will provide the foundation for understanding the impact of daily rhythms in translation fidelity on protein diversity beyond what is encoded for in the genome.",Professor and Associate Department Head,Biology,https://scholars.library.tamu.edu/vivo/display/n2a2bfb97
Christine,Merlin,Associate Professor,"Our research broadly lies in understanding how organisms respond and adapt to changing environments, with an emphasis on circadian biology. Organisms from bacteria to humans use circadian clocks to control a plethora of biochemical, physiological and behavioral rhythms. These clocks are synchronized to daily and seasonal environmental changes to allow organisms to tune specific activities at the appropriate times of day or year.
In our laboratory, we use the eastern North American migratory monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus) as a model system to study animal clock mechanisms and the role of circadian clocks and clock genes in a fascinating biological output, the animal long-distance migration. Every fall, like clockwork, millions of monarch butterflies start migrating thousands of miles from North America to reach their overwintering sites in central Mexico. During their journey south, migrating monarchs use a time-compensated sun compass orientation mechanism to maintain a constant flight bearing. Circadian clocks located in the antennae provide the critical internal timing device for compensation of the sun movement across the sky over the course of the day. The recent sequencing of the monarch genome and the establishment of genetic tools to knockout clock genes (and others) in vivo using nuclease-mediated gene targeting approaches provides us with a unique opportunity to uncover the molecular and cellular underpinnings of the butterfly clockwork, its migratory behavior and their interplay.",Assistant Professor,Biology,https://scholars.library.tamu.edu/vivo/display/n5a23a5d7
Alex,Keene,Professor and Department Head,,Professor and Department Head,Biology,https://scholars.library.tamu.edu/vivo/display/n8650c3cf
Shogo,Sato,Assistant Professor,"Dr. Sato has a broad research background in circadian biology combined with growing knowledge in biochemistry, epigenetics, and metabolism. Especially during his second postdoctoral career in the laboratory of the late Paolo Sassone-Corsi at UCI, he has been tackling the question of how the circadian clock links to metabolic functions. Dr. Sato demonstrated the circadian control of metabolic pathways is reprogramed by aging, which is rescued by caloric restriction (Sato et al., Cell 2017). More recently, Dr. Sato investigated the time-dependent impact of exercise, revealing exercise at the early active phase (fasted phase) exerts robust metabolic responses in skeletal muscle (Sato et al., Cell Metab 2019) and illustrating the atlas of exercise metabolism unique to different exercise timing (Sato et al., Cell under revision). Lastly, Dr. Sato discovered a novel non-canonical role played by the circadian clock specific to pluripotent stem cells (Sato et al., in preparation). Taken together, his past/ongoing studies contribute to the accumulation of evidence underscoring a healthy lifestyle relied on biological clocks.
The goals of Sato lab will be to 1) achieve a fundamental understanding of the intertwined link between metabolism, epigenetics, and the circadian clock, and 2) establish translational interventions targeting the circadian clock system to promote human health by using molecular, biochemical, physiological, and bioinformatics approaches.",Assistant Professor,Biology,https://scholars.library.tamu.edu/vivo/display/n9dce7c6b
Paul,Hardin,Distinguished Professor,"A diverse array of organisms including prokaryotic and eukaryotic microbes, plants, and animals display daily rhythms in physiology, metabolism and/or behavior. These rhythms are not passively driven by environmental cycles of light and temperature, but are actively controlled by endogenous circadian clocks that are set by environmental cycles, keep time in the absence of environmental cues, and activate overt physiological, metabolic and behavioral rhythms at the appropriate time of day. This remarkable conservation of circadian clock function through evolution suggests that maintaining synchrony with the environment is of fundamental importance. Our understanding of the circadian clock is particularly important for human health and well-being. The clearest examples of circadian clock dysfunction are those that result in abnormal sleep-wake cycles, but clock disturbances are also associated with other ailments including epilepsy, cerebrovascular disease, depression, and seasonal affective disorder. The realization that disorders of the sleep-wake cycle such as Familial Advanced Sleep Phase Syndrome can result from alterations in clock gene function underscores the clinical importance of understanding the molecular organization of the circadian system.
Work in my laboratory focuses on defining the molecular mechanisms that drive circadian clock function in the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster. We previously found that the core timekeeping mechanism is based on core and interlocked transcriptional feedback loops. Our studies currently focus on (1) defining post-translational regulatory mechanisms that operate in the core loop to set the 24 hour period, (2) determining whether interlocked loops are important for circadian timekeeping and/or output, (3) understanding how circadian oscillator cells are determined during development, and (4) defining mechanisms that control rhythms in olfactory and gustatory physiology and behavior.",Distinguished Professor,Biology,https://scholars.library.tamu.edu/vivo/display/nf27056c4