Lucifer's Monitoring of Circadian Clock Function in Fruit Flies

The circadian clock’s ~24 hour cycle functions to help an organism adapt its behavior and physiology for expected changes in the environment. The Drosophila fruit fly brain contains 150 clock neurons that each utilize a molecular circadian clock to maintain rhythmicity. We have created flies in which we can track molecular clock function through the use of luciferase, an enzyme used for bioluminescence in fireflies. We then utilized CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing to ablate the period gene in order to evaluate its role in circadian rhythmicity. Without the period transcription repressor, we expect to see loss of rhythmic expression of luciferase.