ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2007
Moonlight shifts the endogenous clock of Drosophila melanogaster.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2007. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 55 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
55 citing papers in PubMed, 129 citations in OpenAlex.
- Mating imperatives drive plasticity of the daily temporal niche in fruit flies.Nature ecology & evolution · 2026Article
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- Sexually dimorphic and clock gene-specific effects of artificial light at night onProceedings. Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Career perspective.Npj biological timing and sleep · 2025Article
- The Never Given 2022 Pittendrigh/Aschoff Lecture: The Clock Network in the Brain-Insights From Insects.Journal of biological rhythms · 2025Article
- Reorganization of circadian activity and the pacemaker circuit under novel light regimes.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2024Article
- A four-oscillator model of seasonally adapted morning and evening activities in Drosophila melanogaster.Journal of comparative physiology. A, Neuroethology, sensory, neural, and behavioral physiology · 2024Review
- Neurobiology and Changing Ecosystems: Mechanisms Underlying Responses to Human-Generated Environmental Impacts.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2023Article
- Common multi-day rhythms in smartphone behavior.NPJ digital medicine · 2023Article
- Article
- Transcriptional Response of Circadian Clock Genes to an 'Artificial Light at Night' Pulse in the CricketInternational journal of molecular sciences · 2022Article
- The Effects of Artificial Night Lighting on Tail Regeneration and Prey Consumption in a Nocturnal Salamander (Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2022Article
- Two light sensors decode moonlight versus sunlight to adjust a plastic circadian/circalunidian clock to moon phase.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2022Article
- Photophysiological cycles in Arctic krill are entrained by weak midday twilight during the Polar Night.PLoS biology · 2021Article
- The genetic basis of diurnal preference in Drosophila melanogaster.BMC genomics · 2020Article
- Lunar synchronization of daily activity patterns in a crepuscular avian insectivore.Ecology and evolution · 2020Article
- EYES ABSENT and TIMELESS integrate photoperiodic and temperature cues to regulate seasonal physiology inProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2020Article
- The Still Dark Side of the Moon: Molecular Mechanisms of Lunar-Controlled Rhythms and Clocks.Journal of molecular biology · 2020Review
- Better Sleep at Night: How Light Influences Sleep inFrontiers in physiology · 2020Review
- Entrainment of theNeuroscience insights · 2020Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors at 3 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The ability to be synchronized by light-dark cycles is a fundamental property of circadian clocks. Although there are indications that circadian clocks are extremely light-sensitive and that they can be set by the low irradiances that occur at dawn and dusk, this has not been shown on the cellular level. Here, we demonstrate that a subset of Drosophila's pacemaker neurons responds to nocturnal dim light. At a nighttime illumination comparable to quarter-moonlight intensity, the flies increase activity levels and shift their typical morning and evening activity peaks into the night. In parallel, clock protein levels are reduced, and clock protein rhythms shift in opposed direction in subsets of the previously identified morning and evening pacemaker cells. No effect was observed on the peripheral clock in the eye. Our results demonstrate that the neurons driving rhythmic behavior are extremely light-sensitive and capable of shifting activity in response to the very low light intensities that regularly occur in nature. This sensitivity may be instrumental in adaptation to different photoperiods, as was proposed by the morning and evening oscillator model of Pittendrigh and Daan. We also show that this adaptation depends on retinal input but is independent of cryptochrome.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.