Parametric effects of light acting via multiple photoreceptors contribute to circadian entrainment in Drosophila melanogaster

Circadian rhythms in physiology and behavior have near 24-hour periodicities that must adjust to the exact 24-hour geophysical cycles on earth to ensure adaptive daily timing. Such adjustment is called entrainment. One major mode of entrainment is via the continuous modulation of circadian period by the prolonged presence of light. Although Drosophila melanogaster is a prominent insect model of chronobiology, there is little evidence for such continuous effects of light in the species. In this study, we demonstrate that prolonged light exposure at specific times of the day shapes the daily timing of activity in flies. We also establish that continuous blue- and UV-blocked light lengthens the circadian period of Drosophila and provide evidence that this is produced by the combined action of multiple photoreceptors which, includes the cell autonomous photoreceptor cryptochrome. Finally, we introduce ramped light cycles as an entrainment paradigm that produces light entrainment that lacks ..., All data were collected using Drosophila Activity Monitors (as described in the methods section of our manuscript). Processed data are uploaded as a compressed file., All files are MS Excel sheets and can be opened with any spreadsheet program. There is one file for each figure of the manuscript which contains all the data used to make the plots and perform downstream analyses., # LightEntrainmentDataset.zip

The zipped folder contains 4 MS Excel sheets.

## Description of the data and file structure

**Figure1.xlsx** contains the activity data plotted in Fig. 1 and Suppl. Fig. 3. There are four sets of columns in the sheet called \"Profiles\" - one each for Canton-S, w1118, yw and loss-of-function cryptochrome mutants. These are three wildtype/background strains and one mutant for the gene cryptochrome. For each genotype, the Zeitgeber Time (ZT), Mean activity counts and across fly SEM are provided for four environmental conditions, i.e., (i) standard Light/Dark cycles (LD), (ii) symmetric skeleton photoperiods (SPP), and two asymmetric skeleton photoperiods, aSPP1 (iii) and aSPP2 (iv). In the sheet called \"Peaks\", individual fly's phase of peaks in ZT units are provided for two independent replicate runs. Data for the aforementioned four genotypes under all the four conditions are given. The run number is noted in the left most column. Entries that say NA eithe...