The mysteries of our biological clock...... ''VIDEO''

When the man felt the need to measure time? Was a biological process in the body, the changes of day and night? What exactly is and how the circadian clock? As if it sounds strange, biological or circadian clock, is a of the greatest mysteries of science over time.

A substance that scientists have found, namely an enzyme, may be the answer for the primary biological clock for all forms of life on our planet. Until now, biologists had not managed to find a watch that is common to the biorhythms of all organizations, as each group of animals, plants, fungi and other organisms seem to have its own separate clock line with the endless rotation of the Earth around the Sun and the succession light - dark, rhythmically coordinating the internal physiology of the organism.



Scientists from the University of Cambridge, among them the Greek Charalambos Kyriacou, concluded that yperoxeiredoxines, enzymes found in almost all animals, plants and other organisms, even the most primitive bacteria, is the "grandfather" the most recent evolutionary biological clocks. The most modern biochemical mechanism regulates circadian 24-hour succession sleep - waking, and other feelings such as hunger, so that organizations generally follow a specific period of "pattern" every day.

According to new research, the ancestor of each individual, biological clock is an ancient and most universal clock that is rooted in this class of enzymes, the yperoxeiredoxines. These enzymes follow a cycle, and constantly alternated between two different chemical states depending on whether they are recent or not react with hydrogen peroxide (a toxic byproduct of the cells of oxygen inhalation). This cycle continues even if there is no light in the environment of the organization.
The mysteries of our biological clock

Scientists believe that these enzymes have developed this cyclic behavior where before about two and a half billion years began to grow organisms on Earth were able to handle large quantities of oxygen, gradually flooded the earth's atmosphere as a consequence of the occurrence of process of photosynthesis by bacteria, a fact which has been called the "Great Oxidation" of Earth.

Since the advent of the first single-celled organisms before about 3.7 billion years ago and up from 2.5 billion years, although there was little oxygen in the atmosphere of our planet. But things changed because of photosynthetic cyanobacteria, which, long before there were plants that do something similar, they began to absorb carbon dioxide and release oxygen into the atmosphere. So the earth was flooded for the first time since oxygen, which was toxic to organisms hitherto accustomed to living in an atmosphere dominated by other gases such as methane.



Eventually survived those organizations that have developed a way to control the damage they cause oxidation in the breath. It is in this context, the researchers showed the vital role of yperoxeiredoxinon who have offered an evolutionary advantage to whoever developed the body anti-oxidant mechanisms. These enzymes protect the stem cells and increases periodically, when the day of bacterial photosynthesis energopoioutan while increasing the oxygen in the atmosphere, which then absorbed the primitive microorganisms.

As oxygen levels not increased on a daily basis, depending on the variation of photosynthesis by bacteria depended on sunlight (no photosynthesis in the dark), these enzymes were gradually a primitive metabolic clock. This, in turn, led gradually to the development of more sophisticated biochemical circadian clocks that have become the doaforoi organizations.
The mysteries of our biological clock
But this theory-that the most modern clocks are based on these enzymes remains to be proven. Other scientists, for example, argue that the primordial biological clock was developed not as a reaction to oxygen, but the pulsed ultraviolet rays.

Below is a documentary by BBC, just on the subject developed:

ellas news,net