The research results prove the importance of the mother´s timing system for the evolution of the bowel´s o´clock of her baby. They could help for better understanding of some diseases that are connected with the bowle defect function, found in newborns.
One of the traditional directions of research at the Institute of Physiology of the CAS is the study of the development (ontogeny) of physiological functions in animals and humans. The Department of Neurohumoral Regulation is devoted to the study of the temporal system that controls the daily rhythmic changes of many processes in the body and ensures their compliance with external conditions. It also has a long-standing interest in how this system develops during ontogeny in the laboratory rat, from the fetal period in the mother’s body, through the early postnatal period, to the late postnatal period. Earlier work by this department has shown that the central clock, which resides in the brain in the so-called suprachiasmatic nuclei, develops gradually. The first signs of their operation are evident around birth, but they continue to develop until days 5 to 10 after birth (Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 101: 6231-6236, 2004). The clock is also present in other cells in the body and is regularly adjusted by the central one. A study by the Division of Neurohumoral Regulation previously demonstrated that clocks are also present in the intestinal epithelium (Gastroenterology 133: 1240-1249, 2007), where they temporally regulate a number of processes related to intestinal function.
The results showed how rhythms in gene switching, which are essential for the running of the clock, gradually develop in the colon (colon) of the chicks. Setting of these rhythms to adult-like is not achieved until around day 20 after birth, the time when weaning occurs. The development of the clock is already set in the mother’s body during fetal development, but is further influenced after birth during the lactation period by changes in the mother’s behaviour during the day. The results indicate the importance of the mother’s timing system for the development of the gut clock of her offspring and may help in understanding the basis of some of the diseases associated with impaired gut function occurring in newborns.
Microscopic image of a section through the colon of a laboratory rat stained by fluorescence immunohistochemistry. A) cell nuclei stained with DAPI, B) cells expressing the clock protein BMAL1, C) cells containing the cell cycle kinase WEE1.
Polidarová L., Olejníková L, Paušlyová L., Sládek M., Soták M., Pácha J., Sumová A.: Development and entrainment of the colonic circadian clock during ontogenesis. Am. J. Physiol. Gastrointest. Liver Physiol. 306(4): G346-356, 2014, Impakt faktor: 3.737, rok: 2013.
