by Mike Crickmore

Everything happens in time, but only a few reliable processes (e.g. the rotation of the earth or the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of cesium 133) have been selected by society as the timers that organize civilization. Timing mechanisms would seem to be useful for the nervous system, but none have been identified (aside from circadian timing) and their potential existence is often doubted.

In a recent study, we show that the quick onset and slow decay of CaMKII’s kinase activity is used by the male fly to know when he’s been mating long enough to transfer sperm to the female. Are flies the only animals that use this ubiquitous and highly conserved enzyme to organize their behavior? A quick review of the history of discoveries in Drosophila suggests not.

Mike Crickmore is an Assistant Professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School and a Research Associate in the Kirby Center at Boston Children’s Hospital.

This story will also appear in the HMS Neurobiology Department newsletter, The Action Potential.

Learn more in the original research article:

CaMKII Measures the Passage of Time to Coordinate Behavior and Motivational State.
Thornquist SC, Langer K, Zhang SX, Rogulja D, Crickmore MA. Neuron. 2020 Jan 22.