CA/AA time course of y w; tim01

Circadian clocks are temporally aligned to the environment via signals, or Zeitgebers, such as daily light and temperature cycles, food availability, and social behavior. In this study, we show that genome-wide expression profiles from temperature-entrained flies show a dramatic difference in the presence or absence of a thermocycle. Whereas transcription appears to be modified globally by changes in temperature, there is a specific set of transcripts that continue to oscillate in constant conditions following temperature entrainment. These transcripts show a significant overlap with a previously defined set of transcripts oscillating in response to a photocycle. Further, these overlapping transcripts maintain the same mutual phase relationships after entrainment by temperature or light. Comparison of the collective temperature- and light-entrained circadian phases indicates that natural environmental light and temperature cycles cooperatively entrain the circadian clock. These findings suggest that a single transcriptional clock in the adult fly head is able to integrate information from both light and temperature.

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Boothroyd CE, Wijnen H, Naef F, Saez L, Young MW