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Abstract
Sustained oscillations abound in biological systems. They occur at all levels of biological
organization over a wide range of periods, from a fraction of a second to years, and
with a variety of underlying mechanisms. They control major physiological functions,
and their dysfunction is associated with a variety of physiological disorders. The
goal of this review is (i) to give an overview of the main rhythms observed at the
cellular and supracellular levels, (ii) to briefly describe how the study of biological
rhythms unfolded in the course of time, in parallel with studies on chemical oscillations,
(iii) to present the major roles of biological rhythms in the control of physiological
functions, and (iv) the pathologies associated with the alteration, disappearance,
or spurious occurrence of biological rhythms. Two tables present the main examples
of cellular and supracellular rhythms ordered according to their period, and their
role in physiology and pathophysiology. Among the rhythms discussed are neural and
cardiac rhythms, metabolic oscillations such as those occurring in glycolysis in yeast,
intracellular Ca++ oscillations, cyclic AMP oscillations in Dictyostelium amoebae,
the segmentation clock that controls somitogenesis, pulsatile hormone secretion, circadian
rhythms which occur in all eukaryotes and some bacteria with a period close to 24 h,
the oscillatory dynamics of the enzymatic network driving the cell cycle, and oscillations
in transcription factors such as NF-ΚB and tumor suppressors such as p53. Ilya Prigogine's
concept of dissipative structures applies to temporal oscillations and allows us to
unify within a common framework the various rhythms observed at different levels of
biological organization, regardless of their period and underlying mechanism.
Title:
Chaos: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Nonlinear Science
Abbreviated Title:
Chaos
Publisher:
AIP Publishing
ISSN
(Print):
1054-1500
ISSN
(Electronic):
1089-7682
Publication date Created:
October
2017
Publication date
(Print):
October
2017
Volume: 27
Issue: 10
Page: 104612
Affiliations
[1
]Unité de Chronobiologie théorique, Service de Chimie physique et Biologie théorique,
Faculté des Sciences, Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB), Campus Plaine, CP 231,
B-1050 Brussels, Belgium