New study on the circadian clock of the fruit fly

Regulating the sleep-wake cycle: researchers demonstrate the importance of transporting a "clock protein" from the cell nucleus for temperature compensation. The higher the temperatures, the faster physiological processes are. But there is an exception - the so-called circadian clock, which regulates the sleep-wake cycle in organisms. A fascinating question for scientists is why the inner clock runs in an almost unchanging way despite fluctuations in temperatures. This is a phenomenon known as temperature compensation. Studies indicate that different molecular mechanisms contribute to this. A team of biologists headed by Prof. Ralf Stanewsky from the University of Münster, and in collaboration with teams at Dalhousie University in Canada and the University of Mainz in Germany, have now found an important piece in the puzzle providing an answer to this question.