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

Open Positions: Undergraduate assistant

Publications

Liu T, Carlsson J, Takeuchi T, Newton L (in press) Direct regulation of abiotic responses by the Arabidopsis circadian clock component PRR7. Plant Journal.[1]
Farré EM, Liu T (in press) The PRR family of transcriptional regulators reflects the complexity and evolution of plant circadian clocks. Curr Opin Plant Biol.[2]
Vieler et al. (2012) Genome, Functional Gene Annotation, and Nuclear Transformation of the Heterokont Oleaginous Alga Nannochloropsis oceanica CCMP1779. Plos Genetics8(11):e1003064. Pubmed
Farré EM, Weise SE (2012) The interactions between the circadian clock and primary metabolism. Curr Opin Plant Biol 15(3):293-300. PubMed
Farre EM (2012) The regulation of plant growth by the circadian clock. Plant Biol 14(3):401-10.PubMed
Nusinow DA, Helfer A, Hamilton EE, King JJ, Imaizumi T, Schultz TF, Farré EM, Kay SA (2011) The ELF4-ELF3-LUX complex links the circadian clock to diurnal control of hypocotyl growth. Nature 475:398-402.PubMed
Dong M, Farre EM, Thomashow MF (2011) CIRCADIAN CLOCK-ASSOCIATED 1 and LATE ELONGATED HYPOCOTYL regulate expression of the C-REPEAT BINDING FACTOR (CBF) pathway in Arabidopsis. PNAS 108(17):7241-6.PubMed