Biological clocks are ticking everywhere throughout our body. They trigger the release of the hormone melatonin during sleep, favour the secretion of digestive enzymes at lunchtime or keep us awake at the busiest moments of the day. A «master clock» in the brain synchronises all the subsidiary ones in various organs. Researchers from the University of Geneva (UNIGE), Switzerland, together with their colleagues from the University of Bath, the Université Claude Bernard in Lyon, EPFL, the University of Surrey, and the Nestlé Institute of Health Sciences, have found that such a circadian clock is at work in our muscles. Their research, funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF), shows that perturbations of this machinery might be important for type 2 diabetes development. Their work has just been published in the magazine PNAS.
