Studying the snail's clock at better than a snail's pace

ABSTRACT

The eye of Bulla gouldiana, the cloudy bubble snail, contains a circadian pacemaker that times a nocturnal locomotor rhythm. The eye expresses a circadian rhythm in spontaneous impulse activity that is generated within individual neurons at the base of the retina. There are approximately 100 of these "clock neurons" that are electrically interconnected. The retinal clock can be synchronized by light cycles. Synchronization involves membrane depolarization and calcium influx into pacemaker neurons. While rhythm expression involves an ionic calcium flux, and rhythm expression appears to be mediated by changes in potassium conductance, circadian rhythm generation does not appear to rely on transmembrane fluxes. Rather, the molecular events of transcription and translation appear to be critical players in generating the near twenty-four-hour rhythm in optic nerve activity.