Photosensitive Alternative Splicing of the Circadian Clock Gene timeless Is Population Specific in a Cold-Adapted Fly, Drosophila montana.

To function properly, organisms must adjust their physiology, behavior and metabolism in response to a suite of varying environmental conditions. One of the central regulators of these changes is organisms' internal circadian clock, and recent evidence has suggested that the clock genes are also important in the regulation of seasonal adjustments. In particular, thermosensitive splicing of the core clock gene <i>timeless</i> in a cosmopolitan fly, <i>Drosophila melanogaster</i> , has implicated this gene to be involved in thermal adaptation. To further investigate this link we examined the splicing of <i>timeless</i> in a northern malt fly species, <i&…