Farre Lab

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Research

Our goal is to understand how circadian clocks work and why they play such a key role in growth and development.

We study the regulation and role of circadian rhythms in plants, which as sessile and autotrophic organisms rely heavily on daily and seasonal changes for their development and growth. Recent findings show that the appropriate resonance of internal rhythms with daily environmental rhythms optimizes plant growth and survival. During the last few years, a large number of clock components have been identified in plants. However, knowledge of the molecular mechanisms involved in plant circadian clocks lags behind studies in other organisms such as Drosophila and Cyanobacteria. Although circadian clocks share a basic architecture among different taxa, they differ in their molecular components. Thus the study of circadian rhythms in plants will help define not only their role on plant specific processes but also the design principles of circadian oscillators.

Lab Members

Publications

Farre EM and Kay SA (2007) PRR7 Protein levels are regulated by light and the circadian clock in Arabidopsis. Plant J 52 (3):548–560.

Para A, Farre EM, Imaizumi T, Pruneda-Paz J, Harmon FG, Kay SA (2007). PRR3 is a vascular regulator of TOC1 stability in the Arabidopsis circadian clock. Plant Cell 19:3462-3473.

Zeilinger MN, Farre EM, Taylor SR, Kay SA and Doyle FJ III (2006) A novel computational model of the circadian clock in Arabidopsis that incorporates PRR7 and PRR9. Mol Syst Biol 2: 58.

Farre EM, Harmer SL, Harmon FG, Yanovsky MJ, Kay SA. (2005) Overlapping and distinct roles of PRR7 and PRR9 in the Arabidopsis circadian clock. Curr Biol 15(1):47-54.

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