The discovery of peripheral intracellular clocks revealed circadian oscillations of clock genes and their targets in all cell types, including those in the lung, sparking exploration of clocks in lung disease pathophysiology. While the focus has been on the role of these clocks in adult airway diseases, clock biology is also likely to be important in perinatal lung development, where it has received far less attention. Historically, fetal circadian rhythms have been considered irrelevant owing to lack of external light exposure, but more recent insights into peripheral clock biology raise questions of clock emergence, its concordance with tissue-specific structure/function, the interdependence of clock synchrony and functionality in perinatal lung development, and the possibility of lung clocks in priming the fetus for postnatal life. Understanding the perinatal molecular clock may unravel mechanistic targets for chronic airway disease across the lifespan. With current research providing more questions than answers, it is about time to investigate clocks in the developing lung.

中文翻译：

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差不多是时间了：肺部发育中的时钟。

周围细胞内时钟的发现揭示了时钟基因及其靶在所有细胞类型中的昼夜节律振荡，包括在肺中的那些，激发了时钟在肺疾病病理生理学中的探索。尽管重点关注这些时钟在成人气道疾病中的作用，但时钟生物学在围产期肺发育中也很重要，因为它在这方面受到的关注很少。从历史上看，由于缺乏外部光照，胎儿的昼夜节律被认为是无关紧要的，但是对外周时钟生物学的最新见解提出了时钟出现的问题，其与组织特定结构/功能的一致性，围产期时钟同步性和功能性的相互依赖性。肺部发育，以及肺钟激发胎儿出生后生命的可能性。了解围产期分子时钟可能会揭示整个生命周期中慢性气道疾病的机制指标。当前的研究提供的问题多于答案，现在该是研究肺发育中的时钟的时候了。