Evidence for conservation of a primordial 12-hour ultradian gene program in humans.

While circadian rhythms are entrained to the once daily light-dark cycle of the sun, many marine organisms exhibit ~12h ultradian rhythms corresponding to the twice daily movement of the tides. Although human ancestors emerged from circatidal environment millions of years ago, direct evidence of the existence of ~12h ultradian rhythms in humans are lacking. Here, we performed prospective, temporal transcriptome profiling of peripheral white blood cells and identified robust ~12h transcriptional rhythms from three healthy subjects. Pathway analysis implicated ~12h rhythms effecting RNA and protein metabolism, with strong homology to the circatidal gene programs previously identified in

Déclaration de conflit d'intérêts

Competing interests: The authors declare no competing interests.