The Bacterial Perspective on Circadian Clocks

Prokaryotes were long thought to be incapable of expressing circadian (daily) rhythms. Research on nitrogen-fixing cyanobacteria in the 1980s squashed that dogma and showed that these bacteria could fulfill the criteria for circadian rhythmicity. Development of a luminescence reporter strain of Synechococcus elongatus PCC 7942 established a model system that ultimately led to the best characterized circadian clockwork at a molecular level. The conclusion of this chapter lists references to the seminal discoveries that have come from the study of cyanobacterial circadian clocks.