Single-celled cyanobacteria, like almost all living organisms, have an internal timepiece called the circadian clock that keeps track of the time of day, and coordinates cell physiology with the environmental light-dark cycle. One important output of the circadian clock is the regulation of the state of chromosome compaction/supercoiling. Recent studies have indirectly demonstrated its oscillatory changes with circadian time at the population-average level, while I attempt to probe the dynamical changes in single cells with real-time microscopy, and with this, to investigate both the mechanisms and functions of the circadian oscillations of chromosome structure.
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