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The biology of time across different scales

Animals time events on scales that span from microseconds to days. In contrast to the technologies devised by humans to keep track of time, biology has developed vastly different mechanisms for timing across these different scales.

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Figure 1: Scales of biological timing.

Katie Ris-Vicari

Figure 2: Temporal processing on the millisecond timescale.
Figure 3: Controlling the period in a biochemical clock.

Katie Ris-Vicari

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by a US National Institutes of Health grant (MH060163). I would like to thank T. Carvalho for helpful comments on an earlier version of this manuscript.

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Buonomano, D. The biology of time across different scales. Nat Chem Biol 3, 594–597 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1038/nchembio1007-594

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