1. Department of Neurobiology, Harvard Medical School, Northeastern University, Boston, Massachusetts 02115, USA
2. Department of Biostatistics, Harvard School of Public Health, Northeastern University, Boston, Massachusetts 02115, USA
3. Department of Biology, Northeastern University, Boston, Massachusetts 02115, USA
4. Department of Statistics, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA

Correspondence to: Charles J. Weitz¹ Correspondence and requests for materials should be addressed to C.J.W. (e-mail: Email: cweitz@hms.harvard.edu).

Abstract

Many mammalian peripheral tissues have circadian clocks^{1, 2, 3, 4}; endogenous oscillators that generate transcriptional rhythms thought to be important for the daily timing of physiological processes^{5, 6}. The extent of circadian gene regulation in peripheral tissues is unclear, and to what degree circadian regulation in different tissues involves common or specialized pathways is unknown. Here we report a comparative analysis of circadian gene expression in vivo in mouse liver and heart using oligonucleotide arrays representing 12,488 genes. We find that peripheral circadian gene regulation is extensive (8–10% of the genes expressed in each tissue), that the distributions of circadian phases in the two tissues are markedly different, and that very few genes show circadian regulation in both tissues. This specificity of circadian regulation cannot be accounted for by tissue-specific gene expression. Despite this divergence, the clock-regulated genes in liver and heart participate in overlapping, extremely diverse processes. A core set of 37 genes with similar circadian regulation in both tissues includes candidates for new clock genes and output genes, and it contains genes responsive to circulating factors with circadian or diurnal rhythms.