Chronobiology and Obesity: The Orchestra Out of Tune

Authors and Disclosures

Marta Garaulet^†, Purificación Gómez-Abellán & Juan Antonio Madrid

Paseo Rector Sabater s/n, Facultad de Biología, Campus de Espinardo, 30100, Murcia, Spain Tel.: +34 363 930 Fax: +34 363 963 garaulet@um.es

^†Author for correspondence

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Executive Summary

• The molecular clock is an important mechanism in relation to metabolism and obesity.

• In the circadian orchestra, different circadian rhythms are the output of rhythmic activity of organs and physiological systems driven by the central pacemarker: the supraquiasmatic nucleus.

• When the orchestra is out of tune within our body, we talk about 'chronodisruption' a term that suggests that rhythms can become desynchronized and that this may have adverse health effects.

• Impairments can be present in inputs such as the light–dark cycle or feeding time, in the central pacemaker or in the outputs related to melatonin and corticoids.

• Short sleep duration could lead to weight gain by increasing time available to eat and decrease energy expenditure by increased fatigue.

• Adipose tissue changes during the day. It expresses clock genes that oscillate accurately and independently of the supraquiasmatic nucleus in adipose tissue explants.

• Nutrigenetics and chronobiology are related as assessed by recent epidemiological studies performed in circadian locomotor output cycles kaput gene variants.