'Cell-autonomous and circuit-level mechanisms of circadian timekeeping in mammals: genes, neurons, and astrocytes' with Michael Hastings

Past Event

Date
 20 February 2019, 1:00pm - 2:00pm

Location
 Oxford Martin School
34 Broad Street (corner of Holywell and Catte Streets), Oxford, OX1 3BD

This lecture is organised by the Programme on Mind and Machine and The Centre for Neural Circuits and Behaviour.

In mammals the cell-autonomous circadian clock pivots around a transcriptional/post-translational feedback loop. However, we remain largely ignorant of the critical molecular, cell biological, and circuit-level processes that determine the precision and robustness of circadian rhythms: what keeps them on track, and what determines their period, which varies by less than 5 minutes over 24 hours? The origin of this precision and robustness is the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) of the basal hypothalamus, the principal circadian pacemaker of the brain. The SCN sits atop a circadian hierarchy that sustains and synchronises the innumerable cell-autonomous clocks of all major organs to solar time (and thereby to each other), by virtue of direct retinal innervation that entrains the transcriptional oscillator of the 20,000 or so component cells of the SCN. Michael will describe real-time imaging approaches to monitor circadian cycles of gene expression and cellular function in the SCN, and intersectional genetic and pharmacological explorations of the cell-autonomous and circuit-level mechanisms of circadian timekeeping. A particular focus will be on “translational switching” approaches to controlling clock function and the surprising discovery of a central role for SCN astrocytes in controlling circadian behaviour.

For further information, please contact Fiona Woods at fiona.woods@cncb.ox.ac.uk

About the speaker

Michael Hastings studied Marine Biology at the University of Liverpool (BSc 1977, PhD on tidal and lunar rhythms in 1980). He was a post-doc with Joe Herbert in the Department of Anatomy, University of Cambridge, followed by appointments as Junior Lecturer, Lecturer, and Reader. He left the University to become a Programme Leader at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in 2001 and has headed its Neurobiology Division, initially jointly, since 2013. He is an elected Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences and the Royal Society.