An Endocrine Society Thematic Issue:

Biological Rhythms 2022

July 2022

Read our special collection of journal articles, published in 2020-2022, focused on biological
rhythms! Curation of the collection was guided by Altmetric Attention Scores and Featured Article
designations.

Recent years have seen a huge increase in the research focus on rhythms, which are typically driven
by interlinked biological clocks and influence a plethora of endocrine processes. Because disruption
of the rhythms is linked to metabolic disease, increased understanding of them holds promise for
treatments.

In Journal of the Endocrine Society, Greendale and coauthors report on melatonin patterns and levels
during the human menstrual cycle. They find a late luteal melatonin rise, likely signaled by
progesterone, that may influence cycle pacemaker control. In a prospective study, Levine and
colleagues find an association between total urinary phytoestrogens, although not individual
phytoestrogens, and shorter menstrual cycle length. Lenert and associates discover that in female
mice, a high-fat diet led to an increase in time spent in proestrus and estrus, and an increase in serum
progesterone during proestrus. 

In Endocrinology, Brubaker and Martchenko survey a Basic Science Collection of mini-reviews

about the circadian clock in metabolic homeostasis. One of the items in the collection, by Seshadri
and Doucette, surveys literature about the role of the pancreatic islet/beta cell circadian clock in beta
cell biology. Oosterman and colleagues discuss the idea that a desynchronization between tissue
metabolic clocks, induced by shift work, contributes to insulin resistance.

In JCEM, Grant and colleagues report that healthy volunteers have a hypersensitive triglyceride

response to ingested calories when they eat at night. Arredondo-Amador and coauthors likewise find
a circadian sensitivity in hormone-sensitive lipase activity. And Gu and associates confirm that a late
dinner induces nocturnal glucose intolerance and reduces fatty acid oxidation and mobilization.

Endocrine Reviews has an article by Kim and Lazar that reviews the transcriptional architecture of
the mammalian circadian clock. Lightman and associates analyze the dynamics of cortisol secretion,
which are affected by disease states, and the implications for mammalian biology. Manoogian and
colleagues put such insights into practice in their account of how time-restricted eating can prevent or
manage metabolic disease.