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Journal of Biological Rhythms
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Neurotransmitter-Mediated Collective Rhythms in Grouped Drosophila Circadian Clocks

Junwei Wang

School of Mathematics and Computational Science, Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou, P.R. China

Jiajun Zhang

School of Mathematics and Computational Science, Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou, P.R. China

Zhanjiang Yuan

School of Mathematics and Computational Science, Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou, P.R. China

Aimin Chen

School of Mathematics and Computational Science, Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou, P.R. China

Tianshou Zhou

School of Mathematics and Computational Science, Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou, P.R. China, mcszhtsh{at}mail.sysu.edu.cn, State Key Laboratory of Biocontrol and Guangzhou Center for Bioinformatics, School of Life Science, Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou, P.R. China

Over the past decades, fly Drosophila melanogaster has being used as a premier model organism to study molecular and genetic bases of circadian rhythms. Here the authors propose a multicellular heterogeneous model for which the network of Drosophila circadian oscillators consists of two groups, the self-sustained lateral neurons (LNs) communicating to each other and the damped dorsal neurons (DNs) receiving neurotransmitters only from the LNs without interaction within this group. By simulating different experimental conditions, the authors find that the proposed model, except for being capable of reproducing some known experimental results well, also can predict some interesting phenomena: 1) The DNs need neuronal projections from the LNs to be rhythmic and to synchronize; 2) the effect of communication on mean amplitude and mean period of two oscillatory groups is different; 3) communication delay can facilitate the network synchronization of the LNs; and 4) only the LNs lose rhythmicity under constant light conditions. These results reveal the mechanism of an integrated pacemaker that would govern behavioral and physiological rhythmicity of the model organism.

Key Words: circadian clock • multicellular model • collective rhythm • synchronization

Journal of Biological Rhythms, Vol. 23, No. 6, 472-482 (2008)
DOI: 10.1177/0748730408324849
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