Protein localization during the cyanobacterial circadian cycle

Circadian clocks are ubiquitous throughout the living world. Of these circadian clocks, the simplest one is found in cyanobacteria - unicellular, photosynthetic marine organisms. Studies of the circadian clock of Synechococcus Elongatus PCC 7942 have shown that the circadian clock is independent of genetic transcription and depends only upon the interactions between three proteins - KaiA, KaiB, and KaiC. As such, the cyanobacterial circadian clock provides a unique opportunity to study complex dynamics that can result just from the interactions between three proteins and how the signal from this core oscillator is then subsequently used to drive other mechanisms in the cell. The purpose of this work was to study the circadian clock in vivo to try and understand their interactions in a living cell rather than in a test tube. When the proteins were tagged with yellow fluorescent protein (YFP) and the cells observed with a microscope, a curious phenomenon was observed.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Physics.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2008

Author dc:creator

• Luitel, Prashant

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Alexander van Oudenaarden.

• Physics.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/45432

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/45432