Scintilla

Microarrays have been used in the study of circadian expression of mammalian genes since 2002 and the consensus was built from those studies that approximately 15% of all the genes expressed in a cell are expressed in a circadian manner. I always felt it was more, much more.

I am no molecular biologist, but I have run a few gels in my life. The biggest problem was to find a control gene - one that does not cycle - to make the comparisons to. Actin, which is often used in such studies as control, cycled in our samples. In the end, we settled on one of the subunits of the ribosome as we could not detect a rhythm in its expression. The operative word is "could not detect". My sampling rate was every 3 hours over a 24-hour period, so it is possible that we could have missed circadian expression of a gene that has multiple peaks, or a single very narrow peak, or a very low amplitude of cycling (it still worked as a control in our case, for different reasons). Thus, my feeling is that everything or almost everything that is expressed in a cell will be expressed in a rhythmic pattern.

If you have heard me talk about clocks (e.g., in the classroom), or have read some of my Clock Tutorials, you know that I tend to say something like "All the genes that code for proteins that are important for the core function of a cell type are expressed in a circadian fashion". So, genes important for liver function will cycle in the liver cells, genes important for muscle function will cycle in muscle cells, etc.

But I omit to note that all such genes that are important for the function of the cell type are all the genes that are expressed in that cell. The genes not used by that cell are not expressed. But I could not go straight out and say "all the genes that are expressed in a cell are expressed in a circadian pattern", because I had no data to support such a notion. Until yesterday.

What happened yesterday?

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Continuing the trail from Lost At Sea: The North Pacific Gyre Oscillation.

Since 1945, fishermen in the California current of the Pacific Ocean have been tracking temperature, salinity and nutrients, among other things, in the ocean to help them predict changes in fish populations like sardines and anchovies that are important for the industry. Studying this data, along with satellite images, Di Lorenzo discovered a pattern of current that he named the North Pacific Gyre Oscillation.

Recent satellite data suggest that this current is undergoing intensification as the temperature of the Earth has risen over the past few decades.

"Although the North Pacific Gyre Oscillation is part of a natural cycle of the climate system, we find evidence suggesting that its amplitude may increase as global warming progresses," said Di Lorenzo.

If this is true, this newly found climate pattern may help scientists predict how the ecosystem of the Pacific Ocean is likely to change if the world continues to warm, as predicted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

This is a very short term study, especially since we already know of oscillations in the region (PDO) that have periods longer than the length of this study, so it's reaching to claim that a trend has been observed. Still, it's one more tool in the kit for practical application, and if further study can link the various oscillations over longer time periods we might begin to have some predictive capability.

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Scientists at the Georgia Institute of Technology have discovered a new climate pattern called the North Pacific Gyre Oscillation. This new pattern explains, for the first time, changes in the water that are important in helping commercial fishermen understand fluctuations in the fish stock. They’re also finding that as the temperature of the Earth is warming, large fluctuations in these factors could help climatologists predict how the oceans will respond in a warmer world.

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Scientists at Georgia Tech have discovered a new climate pattern, the North Pacific Gyre Oscillation. This pattern explains, for the first time, changes in the water important in helping commercial fishermen understand fluctuations in the fish stock. They're also finding that as the Earth is warming, large fluctuations in these factors could help climatologists predict how oceans will respond in a warmer world. The research appears in the April 30 edition of Geophysical Research Letters.

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Scientists at the Georgia Institute of Technology have discovered a new climate pattern called the North Pacific Gyre Oscillation.

This new pattern explains changes in the water that are important in helping commercial fishermen understand fluctuations in the fish stock. They also believe that as the temperature of the Earth warms, large fluctuations in these factors could help climatologists predict how the oceans will respond in a warmer world.

“We’ve been able to explain, for the first time, the changes in salinity, nutrients and chlorophyll that we see in the Northeast Pacific,” said Emanuele Di Lorenzo, assistant professor in Georgia Tech’s School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences.

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