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Dr Hugh Piggins and Dr Mino Belle from the University of Manchester tested mathematical predictions made by Dr Daniel Forger and his PhD student Casey Diekman at the University of Michigan. Using electrophysiology to look at neurons in the brain’s daily clock in the suprachiasmatic nuclei or SCN, Drs Belle and Piggins found that there were two basic types of neurons with very different electrical properties. One type that contained a key clock gene, per1, was able to survive at unusually high levels of excitability that would kill most neurons in the brain. Indeed, the per1 cells also showed a huge difference in their electricity level, or excitability, between day and night. The other type of cells that did not appear to make per1 had very different electrical properties and could not survive the levels of excitability displayed by per1 neurons. They now plan to see if there are clock-like cells in other parts of the brain. It’s possible we will see this pattern of activity elsewhere.(Rrom Labslink.com RSS feeds)