Damped circadian oscillation in the absence of KaiA in Synechococcus

Naohiro Kawamoto, Hiroshi Ito, Isao T. Tokuda and Hideo Iwasaki ()
Additional contact information
Naohiro Kawamoto: Department of Electrical Engineering and Biological Science, Waseda University
Hiroshi Ito: Faculty of Design, Kyushu University
Isao T. Tokuda: Graduate School of Science and Engineering, Ritsumeikan University
Hideo Iwasaki: Department of Electrical Engineering and Biological Science, Waseda University

Nature Communications, 2020, vol. 11, issue 1, 1-12

Abstract: Abstract Proteins KaiA, KaiB and KaiC constitute a biochemical circadian oscillator in the cyanobacterium Synechococcus elongatus. It has been reported kaiA inactivation completely abolishes circadian oscillations. However, we show here that kaiBC promoter activity exhibits a damped, low-amplitude oscillation with a period of approximately 24 h in kaiA-inactivated strains. The damped rhythm resonates with external cycles with a period of 24–26 h, indicating that its natural frequency is similar to that of the circadian clock. Double-mutation experiments reveal that kaiC, kaiB, and sasA (encoding a KaiC-binding histidine kinase) are all required for the damped oscillation. Further analysis suggests that the kaiA-less damped transcriptional rhythm requires KaiB-KaiC complex formation and the transcription-translation feedback loop, but not the KaiC phosphorylation cycle. Our results provide insights into mechanisms that could potentially underlie the diurnal/circadian behaviors observed in other bacterial species that possess kaiB and kaiC homologues but lack a kaiA homologue.

Date: 2020
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-16087-x Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:11:y:2020:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-020-16087-x

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-16087-x

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().