Winding up the cyanobacterial circadian clock

The endogenous circadian clock of the cyanobacterium Synechococcus elongatus controls many cellular processes and confers an adaptive advantage on this organism in a competitive environment. To be advantageous, this internal biological oscillator must be reset daily to remain in synchrony with its environment and to transduce temporal information to control behaviors at appropriate times of day. Recent studies have discovered new components of these input and output pathways of the clock that help to ‘wind up’ our understanding of the clock system as a whole. Here we review the mechanisms by which S. elongatus maintains internal time, discuss how external stimuli affect this oscillation, and evaluate the mechanisms underlying circadian controlled cellular events.