Data from: Temperature-dependent resetting of the molecular circadian oscillator in Drosophila.

Circadian clocks responsible for daily time keeping in a wide range of organisms synchronize to daily temperature cycles via pathways that remain poorly understood. To address this problem from the perspective of the molecular oscillator we monitored temperature-dependent resetting of four of its core components in the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster: The transcripts and proteins for the clock genes period (per) and timeless (tim). The molecular circadian cycle in Drosophila heads exhibited parallel responses to temperature-mediated resetting at the levels of per transcript, tim transcript, and TIM protein. Early phase-adjustment specific to per transcript rhythms was explained by clock-independent temperature-driven transcription of per. An altered and more readily re-entrainable temperature-entrained circadian oscillator that featured temperature-driven per transcript rhythms and phase-shifted TIM and PER protein rhythms was found for flies of the ‘Tim 4’ genotype, which lacked daily tim transcript oscillations but maintained post-transcriptional temperature entrainment of tim expression. The accelerated molecular and behavioural temperature entrainment observed for Tim 4 flies indicates that clock-controlled tim expression constrains the rate of temperature cycle-mediated circadian resetting.