Models of temperature compensation in biological rhythms

This paper gives a brief introduction into different approaches to understand temperature-compensation in biological rhythms. The Goodwin oscillator, the first negative feedback model proposed more than 30 years ago, appears of particular interest for modelling the circadian clocks in Neurospora and Drosophila and their temperature compensation. Remarkably, the Goodwin oscillator not only gives qualitative correct phase response curves for temperature-steps and temperature-pulses, but also simulates the temperature behavior of Neurospora frq and Drosophila per mutants. The Goodwin oscillator predicts that circadian periods are strongly dependent on the turnover of the clock-mRNA or clock-protein. A more rapid turnover of clock-mRNA or clock-protein results in shorter period lengths, a slower turnover in longer period lengths. The Goodwin oscillator also shows that the representation of the long period frq7 mutant is less sensitive against translation inhibition pulses compared with the corresponding wild-type parametrization.