Circadian clocks are important to much of life on Earth and are of inherent interest to humanity, implicated in fields ranging from agriculture and ecology to developmental biology and medicine. New techniques show that it is not simply the presence of clocks, but coordination between them that is critical for complex physiological processes across the kingdoms of life. Recent years have also seen impressive advances in synthetic biology to the point where parallels can be drawn between synthetic biological and circadian oscillators. This review will emphasize theoretical and experimental studies that have revealed a fascinating dichotomy of coupling and heterogeneity among circadian clocks. We will also consolidate the fields of chronobiology and synthetic biology, discussing key design principles of their respective oscillators.

生物钟对地球上的大部分生命都很重要，对人类具有内在的兴趣，涉及从农业和生态学到发育生物学和医学的各个领域。新技术表明，不仅仅是时钟的存在，而且它们之间的协调对于整个生命王国的复杂生理过程至关重要。近年来，合成生物学也取得了令人印象深刻的进步，可以在合成生物学和昼夜节律振荡器之间得出相似之处。这篇综述将强调理论和实验研究，这些研究揭示了生物钟之间耦合和异质性的迷人二分法。我们还将整合时间生物学和合成生物学领域，讨论各自振荡器的关键设计原则。