On Thursday, July 12, Rosa Ceinos, a researcher at the University of Vigo, presented the lecture “Circadian clocks across multiple organs from Turbot”, in which she discussed the search for key components of the circadian clock in turbot and whether they can be regulated by light and/or feeding.
The Somali cavefish is a species that evolved over three million years under the extreme conditions of the Somali desert. Studies show that it has a troglomorphic phenotype, including an aberrant biological clock. By studying the key components of this clock, it was discovered that it runs with extremely long periods because it has lost the ability to be synchronized by light. However, it does exhibit very robust 24-hour rhythms when synchronized by feeding time. This provides evidence for the existence of at least two clocks or oscillators in fish: one regulated by light and the other by feeding.
This work is part of the project Unraveling multiple clock mechanisms in vertebrates, co-funded by the Xunta de Galicia and the European Union. During the first two years, the project was carried out at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (Germany) within the research group led by Nick Foulkes, and in the Department of Biology and Evolution at the University of Ferrara (Italy) in collaboration with Cristián Bertolucci. Since 2016, Rosa Ceinos has been part of the Fish Physiology group led by J. L. Soengas and Jesús Míguez at the Faculty of Biology, University of Vigo.
