Resumen

Life on Earth has repeatedly evolved an internal timekeeping mechanism, known as the circadian clock, which enhances fitness and survival by synchronizing growth and physiology with daily environmental fluctuations. In multicellular organisms, the circadian clock operates with varying speed, strength, and timing across different organs, regulating the expression of spatially specific subsets of rhythmic genes. In this seminar, I will present our contributions to understanding themolecular mechanisms that govern the circadian clock function in plants. I will focus on our recent work, which has revealed a novel framework for understanding how the circadian clock function generates rhythmic specificity across organs, as well as how the circadian system responds to pathogen infections. This work provides a foundational understanding of how rhythmic transcriptomes are established across plant organs, offering potential insights into how spatial heterogeneity of rhythmic processes is achieved in other organisms.

Jose Pruneda-Paz. School of Biological Sciences, University of California San Diego, US