TY  - JOUR
A1  - Pfeffer, Martina
A1  - Korf, Horst-Werner
A1  - Wicht, Helmut
T1  - The role of the melatoninergic system in light-entrained behavior of mice
T2  - International journal of molecular sciences
N2  - The role of endogenous melatonin for the control of the circadian system under entrained conditions and for the determination of the chronotype is still poorly understood. Mice with deletions in the melatoninergic system (melatonin deficiency or the lack of melatonin receptors, respectively) do not display any obvious defects in either their spontaneous (circadian) or entrained (diurnal) rhythmic behavior. However, there are effects that can be detected by analyzing the periodicity of the locomotor behaviors in some detail. We found that melatonin-deficient mice (C57Bl), as well as melatonin-proficient C3H mice that lack the melatonin receptors (MT) 1 and 2 (C3H MT1,2 KO), reproduce their diurnal locomotor rhythms with significantly less accuracy than mice with an intact melatoninergic system. However, their respective chronotypes remained unaltered. These results show that one function of the endogenous melatoninergic system might be to stabilize internal rhythms under conditions of a steady entrainment, while it has no effects on the chronotype.
KW  - circadian
KW  - stability
KW  - chronotype
KW  - melatonin
KW  - locomotor rhythm
KW  - diurnal
Y1  - 2017
UR  - http://publikationen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/44003
UR  - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-440036
SN  - 1422-0067
SN  - 1661-6596
N1  - © 2017 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
VL  - 18
IS  - 3, Art. 530
SP  - 1
EP  - 8
PB  - Molecular Diversity Preservation International
CY  - Basel
ER  -