Healing by the Clock: In Fruit Flies, Intestinal Stem-Cell Regeneration Fluctuates With the Time of Day

One of the circadian clock's transcription factors, proteins that regulate gene activity, is called period. Stem cell biologist Phillip Karpowicz, HMS research fellow in genetics, actually found period in the gut of a fly when working in the lab of Norbert Perrimon, the James Stillman Professor of Developmental Biology in the Harvard Medical School Department of Genetics. He studied flies to see how the intestine regenerates cells when they are injured, and found that gene period was needed and that gut healing fluctuates according to the time of day.

The whole report can be found here, at cellreports.com, and goes into the details of the experiment.