Biological Rhythms, BIOL 489
Course Description: Have you ever wondered why you get sleepy in the afternoon, why you experience jet lag when you fly across time zones, why asthma attacks occur mostly at night, or maybe why medicines are supposed to be taken at certain times of the day? All of these phenomena are the result of your internal timing mechanism, your circadian biological clock! This course will give you the answers to these and many other questions about the role of the clock in healthy living. We will start with an introduction to the basic mechanisms of biological timing. This will be followed by an in-depth study of clocks in model organisms, and ending with the relationship between clocks and human disease.
