Jay Dunlap
Dartmouth College, NH·Genetics
Nearly every organism with complex cells keeps time with an internal circadian clock, a roughly 24-hour rhythm that shapes metabolism, sleep, cell division and access to genes. A healthy clock supports physical and mental health.
- Fields
Genetics
Biology
Biochemistry
- Topics
circadian rhythms
circadian clock
biological clock
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Dec 2026
What they work on
- Determine how phosphorylation and interactions among clock proteins cause repression in the circadian feedback loop, and test whether turnover of negative-element proteins matters in the mammalian clock.
- Probe how clock-controlled phosphorylation produces temperature compensation, and how RNA metabolism and gene expression produce nutritional compensation, in Neurospora.
- Use cell biological imaging tools with genetics to define where and when clock components act inside the cell.
- Map the hierarchical network of transcription factors controlling Neurospora's responses to light and time using computational and informatic tools, to build a model of global circadian control of a genome.
More about the research
Disruption from jet lag or shift work has been linked to diabetes, cancer and mental illness. At its core, the clock is a feedback loop: clock proteins switch on genes whose products then shut those same proteins off. This loop's design is shared from fungi to mammals.
Why it matters
Circadian disruption from shift work, jet lag or clock malfunction has been linked to diabetes, metabolic disorders, sleep–wake problems, cancer and mental illness. Understanding the clock's molecular mechanism across fungi, mice and humans could inform prevention and treatment of these conditions. It could also explain how the body keeps time despite changes in temperature and nutrition.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Jennifer Hurley
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, NY·Biology·Early-career
Predict where environmental signals enter circadian control of transcription and translation, using computational analysis of time-series RNA and protein data from the fungus Neurospora crassa.
Shannon Bailey
University of Alabama at Birmingham, AL·Physiology
Establish whether chronic alcohol consumption disrupts 24-hour rhythms in liver mitochondrial energy production, including the activity of cytochrome c oxidase, the rate-limiting enzyme of respiration, in alcohol-fed mice.
Shelley Tischkau
Southern Illinois University-Carbondale, IL·Physiology
Test whether restricted feeding, limiting food intake to set times of day, can reset circadian clock function and restore adipose tissue rhythms after the clock is disrupted by chronic activation of the aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AhR) by pollutants such as dioxins.
The school
Dartmouth College: 16 labs on PI Pages, $418M a year on research, 104 research doctorates a year.
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