Constitutive overexpression of the Drosophila period protein inhibits period mRNA cycling.

The Drosophila period gene (per) is a likely component of a circadian pacemaker. per protein (PER) participates in the regulation of its own expression, at least in part at the transcriptional level. There is at present no direct evidence that the effect of PER on its own transcription is intracellular. Results presented in this paper show that (i) the circadian oscillations of both per mRNA and PER protein are quantitatively similar in eye photoreceptor cells and in brain; (ii) constitutive overexpression of PER only in photoreceptors R1-R6 represses endogenous per RNA cycling in these cells but not in other per-expressing cells; (iii) the overexpression construct has no effect on locomotor activity rhythms. These results indicate that the autoregulation of per expression is a direct, intracellular event and suggest that each per-expressing cell contains an autonomous oscillator of which the per feedback loop is a component.