Simplified Models for the Mammalian Circadian Clock.

Numerous biological mechanisms are synchronized by the circadian rhythm in species so diverse as mushrooms, drosophiles or mammals. Because of its ubiquity and of its implication in numerous cellular functions, we believe important to be able to extract the main “coarse-grain” mechanisms common to a majority of organisms. In this article we consider both differential equation models and discrete models and we deliberately choose to push the simplicity of the model as far as possible, focusing only on a few biological behaviours of interest. The hope is to get the essential abstract causalities that govern these behaviours.