Circadian oscillation relates to our bodies’ 24-hour rhythm – it is our biological clock. The importance of this clock is that it regulates gene expressions, physiology and behaviour. Only 20-year ago experts would have said that bacteria would be to simple organisms to incorporate such a feature. It was known that eukaryotic cells of the unicellular species such as Acetabularia and Paramecium contain circadian oscillation (also disperse mammalian nerve cells). That bacteria also contains a robust circadian oscillation is however a relative new finding and has become an area of intense research. Cyanobacteria are one of the studied specimens that seem to have an even better synchronization than the eukaryotic cells. Instead of having their oscillations dampened and becoming desynchronized during constant conditions, noise or variability the cyanobacterial populations remain impressively stable.
A research team lead by Mihalcescu has used self-luminescent strains of cyanobacteria that glow when the promoter region psbAI is up-regulated by circadian oscillations. However, detecting these pinpricks of light emitted by single bacteria is as difficult as detecting dim glowing stars thus the equipments used have similarities. The result of the team shows that the rhythm is not sloppier and that divided daughter cells remains synchronized.
