25 February 2022
Mustafa Aydogan
Department of Biochemistry & Biophysics
UCSF
Precise temporal control of development, metabolism and aging is critical for maintaining healthy physiology and preventing disease. Latest advances in biological timing studies substantiate an emerging concept of autonomous clocks that are normally entrained by the cell cycle and/or the circadian clock to run in synchrony, but have evolved to run independently to regulate different cellular events. In this talk, I will first attempt at elucidating the mechanism, logic and design of such autonomous clocks with examples from recent work done by us and others. I will then discuss their potential functions and preserved autonomy in the face of robust phase-locking induced by more promiscuous and broad temporal circuits, such as cyclin-dependent kinases. By way of example, I will present our recent, unpublished discovery of cytoplasmic divisions without nuclei in flies, and how their preserved autonomy confers physiological advantages to safeguard the blastoderm from cellular noise that introduce local delays in mitotic entry prior to morphogenesis.