Orchestrated transcription of key pathways in Arabidopsis by the circadian clock

Like most organisms, plants have endogenous biological clocks that coordinate internal events with the external environment. We used high-density oligonucleotide microarrays to examine gene expression in Arabidopsis and found that 6% of the more than 8000 genes on the array exhibited circadian changes in steady-state messenger RNA levels. Clusters of circadian-regulated genes were found in pathways involved in plant responses to light and other key metabolic pathways. Computational analysis of cycling genes allowed the identification of a highly conserved promoter motif that we found to be required for circadian control of gene expression. Our study presents a comprehensive view of the temporal compartmentalization of physiological pathways by the circadian clock in a eukaryote.