Distinct signature in liver and gut clock revealed by a ketogenic diet

The circadian clock orchestrates rhythms in physiology and behavior, allowing the organism to adapt to daily environmental changes. Recently, efforts have been made to unravel the connection between the circadian clock and metabolism and to understand how the peripheral clock in different organs coordinates circadian responses to maintain metabolic homeostasis. It is becoming clear that diet can influence diurnal rhythms, however, the molecular mechanisms responsible for alterations in daily oscillations and how tissue-specific clocks interpret a nutritional challenge are not well understood. Here, we reveal tissue-specific circadian plasticity in response to a ketogenic diet (KD) in both the liver and intestine and a remarkable deviation within these two tissues following subsequent carbohydrate supplementation. KD caused a dramatic change in the circadian transcriptome in both liver and intestine in a tissue-specific fashion. In particular, both the amplitude of clock genes as well as specific BMAL1 recruitment was profoundly altered by KD while the intestinal clock was devoid of such plasticity. While PPARG nuclear accumulation was circadian in both tissues, it showed substantial phase specificity as did downstream targets. Finally, the gut and liver clocks had distinct responses to carbohydrate supplementation to KD composition, suggesting a higher plasticity in the ileum whose gene expression was almost restored to control baseline. For the first time our results demonstrate how nutrients modulate clock function in a tissue-specific manner, suggesting that a food stress arouses unique circadian molecular signatures in distinct peripheral tissues.

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Tognini P, Murakami M, Liu Y, Eckel-Mahan KL, Newman JC, Verdin E, Baldi P, Sassone-Corsi P