Circadian clocks: how rhythms structure life

开始时间: 04/22/2022 持续时间: 6 weeks

所在平台: CourseraArchive

课程类别: 医学

大学或机构: Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (LMU)(慕尼黑大学)

授课老师: Martha Merrow Till Roenneberg

课程主页: https://www.coursera.org/course/circaclock

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课程详情

Have you ever wondered why some people sleep later or earlier than others or why your sleep times are seasonal? Did you know that even fungi make spores earlier or later than their relatives each day? Daily rhythms – from gene expression to behaviour – are everywhere in nature and they form a web of rhythmic interactions – from bees to blossoms to moles to hawks. That we are earlier or later than our neighbours or even than family members is due to a combination of our genes, our age and our environment. In this Coursera offering, you will be taught about the science of chronobiology, with a specific emphasis on daily or circadian clocks. We will discuss a variety of biological clock systems from bacteria to humans and will explain how circadian systems are organised from the molecular mechanisms that generate the daily rhythms to the many ways that circadian clocks control our lives.

课程大纲

Week One: Introduction to 'chronobiology'. What sorts of rhythms are observed in nature? Most of the lecture will be spent on describing daily or circadian rhythms in organisms from bacteria to man.

 Week Two: Circadian rhythms synchronise to the 24-hour environment. Organisms use specialised photoreceptors to do this and they display characteristic properties in this process. We experience this active synchronisation process for example when we suffer from jet lag!

 Week Three: We will discuss the elaborate molecular mechanisms that allow circadian clocks to produce their daily rhythms and to synchronise them to its environment. We will compare these mechanisms in a wide range of organisms.

 Week Four: Circadian clocks serve to orchestrate physiology and metabolism in a coordinated way over the course of the day. Therefore, practically all processes in an organism are regulated outputs of the clock. We'll discuss examples of these processes and ideas about how this circadian regulation works.

 Week Five: With the appreciation of the clock’s global control, we proceed to discussing how much this temporal programme controls our lives from birth to death and how much we mistreat the circadian clock in modern life.

 Week Six: Finally, we will look at the clock’s relationship to pathology.  What are the consequences of living against the clock, what happens if the clock ‘breaks’, and how can we use our knowledge about the circadian system in medical diagnosis and therapy.

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课程简介

This course is geared towards starting undergraduate students. A solid background in biology will be helpful but not absolutely essential. The material will be of interest to those who are pursuing a career in any of the life sciences as well as anyone who has run up against their biological clock.

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