Unicellular organisms have their own biological clocks

Guess who fed us this story? None other than our very own online discussion expert and Cicadian Rhythm expert, Bora Zivkovic, who was thrilled by an article that we published on PLoS ONE entitled Diurnally Entrained Anticipatory Behavior in Archaea . So excited was he, that he wrote this blog post which made it onto the New York Times Science page via the ScienceBlogs widget.

Here’s what he said as he tried to explain the significance of this to us earlier today:

“We knew for at least a century that most plants, fungi and animals had clocks. We knew since the 1990s that some bacteria have clocks. With this PLoS ONE paper we now know that at least one species of Archaea has a clock – quite exciting, methinks. All three Big Domains Of Life are now covered!”

It was with some disappointment that he learned that we wouldn’t be letting him enter this post into the “blog pick of the month” competition, since he is the most influential judge! However, it is a very worthwhile post and that is why we are featuring it here and hope you also enjoy it.

Photo taken by Steve Grosbois’, reproduced courtesy of Creative Commons Copyright.