Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Faculty of Arts and Sciences Center for Systems Biology, Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA.
FEBS Lett. 2009 Dec 17;583(24):3938-47. doi: 10.1016/j.febslet.2009.11.021.
The circadian clock of the cyanobacterium Synechococcus elongatus PCC 7942 is governed by a core oscillator consisting of the proteins KaiA, KaiB, and KaiC. Remarkably, circadian oscillations in the phosphorylation state of KaiC can be reconstituted in a test tube by mixing the three Kai proteins and adenosine triphosphate. The in vitro oscillator provides a well-defined system in which experiments can be combined with mathematical analysis to understand the mechanism of a highly robust biological oscillator. In this Review, we summarize the biochemistry of the Kai proteins and examine models that have been proposed to explain how oscillations emerge from the properties of the oscillator's constituents.
聚球藻 PCC 7942 的生物钟由一个核心振荡器控制，该振荡器由 KaiA、KaiB 和 KaiC 三种蛋白组成。值得注意的是，在试管中混合三种 Kai 蛋白和三磷酸腺苷就可以重建 KaiC 磷酸化状态的生物钟振荡。体外振荡器提供了一个明确的系统，在这个系统中可以将实验与数学分析相结合，以了解高度稳健的生物振荡器的机制。在这篇综述中，我们总结了 Kai 蛋白的生物化学，并研究了已提出的模型，以解释振荡如何从振荡器成分的特性中产生。
