第50回 ExCELLSセミナーを開催いたします。
　※本セミナーは英語で実施されます。Seminar Language: English

日時

2025年12月3日（水） 16:00〜17:00

開催形式

ハイブリッド　
　　【会場】山手3号館2F西　大会議室  　
　　【配信】Zoom　※所内メールでURLをお知らせします　

演者

Associate Prof. Shona H. Wood
UiT – The Arctic University of Norway

題目

The Rhythms of Hibernation: Clocks, Metabolism, and Life in Slow Motion

要旨

Dr. Shona Wood is an associate professor of animal physiology at UiT – The Arctic University of Norway. Her research focuses on seasonal timekeeping mechanisms which couple day length sensing (photoperiodism) to innate long-term timers (“circannual clock”), scheduling seasonal physiological adaptations e.g. hibernation, changes in metabolism, fattening and reproductive activity. She has demonstrated that individual cells of an important seasonal endocrine tissue, the pars tuberalis, switch between “summer” and “winter” states to define the phase of the circannual cycle. Furthermore, by building on the standard model for photoperiodic transduction in mammals she has demonstrated that the clock genes BMAL2 and DEC1, along with genome wide changes in chromatin state, provide a mechanism for circadian-based seasonal timekeeping in vertebrates. Her emphasis has recently shifted towards a specialized glial cell, the tanycyte, which alters the thyroid hormone environment in the brain leading to seasonal shifts in physiology. Recently, her team demonstrated tanycytic plasticity in response to photoperiod that may constitute a mechanism to tailor metabolic development for extended survival in variable overwintering environments. Her current research, supported by a prestigious European research council consolidator grant, focuses on the seasonally regulated process of extreme metabolic suppression, hibernation. Specifically, the longer-term timing mechanisms behind seasonal preparation and spontaneous exit from hibernation, and the shorter-term regulation of torpor arousal cycling throughout hibernation.

ポスター

お問い合わせ先

榎木 亮介（バイオフォトニクス研究グループ）