18 research outputs found

    Entrainment of the Mammalian Cell Cycle by the Circadian Clock: Modeling Two Coupled Cellular Rhythms

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    The cell division cycle and the circadian clock represent two major cellular rhythms. These two periodic processes are coupled in multiple ways, given that several molecular components of the cell cycle network are controlled in a circadian manner. For example, in the network of cyclin-dependent kinases (Cdks) that governs progression along the successive phases of the cell cycle, the synthesis of the kinase Wee1, which inhibits the G2/M transition, is enhanced by the complex CLOCK-BMAL1 that plays a central role in the circadian clock network. Another component of the latter network, REV-ERBα, inhibits the synthesis of the Cdk inhibitor p21. Moreover, the synthesis of the oncogene c-Myc, which promotes G1 cyclin synthesis, is repressed by CLOCK-BMAL1. Using detailed computational models for the two networks we investigate the conditions in which the mammalian cell cycle can be entrained by the circadian clock. We show that the cell cycle can be brought to oscillate at a period of 24 h or 48 h when its autonomous period prior to coupling is in an appropriate range. The model indicates that the combination of multiple modes of coupling does not necessarily facilitate entrainment of the cell cycle by the circadian clock. Entrainment can also occur as a result of circadian variations in the level of a growth factor controlling entry into G1. Outside the range of entrainment, the coupling to the circadian clock may lead to disconnected oscillations in the cell cycle and the circadian system, or to complex oscillatory dynamics of the cell cycle in the form of endoreplication, complex periodic oscillations or chaos. The model predicts that the transition from entrainment to 24 h or 48 h might occur when the strength of coupling to the circadian clock or the level of growth factor decrease below critical values

    Genome-Wide and Phase-Specific DNA-Binding Rhythms of BMAL1 Control Circadian Output Functions in Mouse Liver

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    Temporal mapping during a circadian day of binding sites for the BMAL1 transcription factor in mouse liver reveals genome-wide daily rhythms in DNA binding and uncovers output functions that are controlled by the circadian oscillator

    Deterministic mathematical modelling for cancer chronotherapeutics: cell population dynamics and treatment optimisation

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    Chronotherapeutics has been designed and used for more than twenty years as an effective treatment against cancer by a few teams around the world, among whom one of the first is Francis LĂ©vi's at Paul-Brousse hospital (Villejuif, France), in application of circadian clock physiology to determine best infusion times within the 24-hour span for anticancer drug delivery. Mathematical models have been called in the last ten years to give a rational basis to such optimised treatments, for use in the laboratory and ultimately in the clinic. While actual clinical applications of the theoretical optimisation principles found have remained elusive so far to improve chronotherapeutic treatments in use, mathematical models provide proofs of concepts and tracks to be explored experimentally, to progress from theory to bedside. Starting from a simple ordinary differential equation model that allowed setting and numerically solving a drug delivery optimisation problem with toxicity constraints, this modelling enterprise has been extended to represent the division cycle in proliferating cell populations with different molecular targets, to allow for the representation of anticancer drug combinations that are used in clinical oncology. The main point to be made precise in such a therapeutic optimisation problem is to establish, here in the frame of circadian chronobiology, physiologically based differences between healthy and cancer cell populations in their responses to drugs. To this aim, clear biological evidence at the molecular level is still lacking, so that, starting from indirect observations at the experimental and clinical levels and from theoretical considerations on the model, speculations have been made, that will be exposed in this review of cancer chronotherapeutics models with the corresponding optimisation problems and their numerical solutions, to represent these differences between the two cell populations, with regard to circadian clock control
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