Circadian and infradian rhythms of cardiac L-type Ca2+ channel transcription

Geochemical tracers of crustal fluids (CO2, He, Rn) provide a useful tool for the identification of buried fault structures. We acquired geochemical data during 7-months of continual sampling to identify causal processes underlying correlations between ambient air and degassing patterns of three gases (CO2, He, Rn) in a nest of red wood ants (Formica polyctena; “RWA”) and the soil at Goloring in the Neuwied Basin, a part of the East Eifel Volcanic Field (EEVF). We explored whether temporal relations and degassing rhythms in soil and nest gas concentrations could be indicators of hidden faults through which the gases migrate to the surface from depth. In nest gas, the coupled system of CO2-He and He concentrations exceeding atmospheric standards 2-3 fold suggested that RWA nests may be biological indicators of hidden degassing faults and fractures at small scales. Equivalently periodic degassing infradian rhythms in the RWA nest, soil, and three nearby minerals springs suggested NW-SE and NE-SW tectonic linkages. Because volcanic activity in the EEVF is dormant, more detailed information on the EEVF’s tectonic, magmatic, and degassing systems and its active tectonic fault zones are needed. Such data could provide additional insights into earthquake processes that are related to magmatic processes at the lower crust.

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RhythmicAlly: Your R and Shiny–Based Open-Source Ally for the Analysis of Biological Rhythms

Journal of Biological Rhythms ◽

10.1177/0748730419862474 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 34 (5) ◽

pp. 551-561 ◽

Cited By ~ 7

Author(s):

Lakshman Abhilash ◽

Vasu Sheeba

Keyword(s):

Time Series ◽

Open Source ◽

Time Series Data ◽

Biological Rhythms ◽

Series Data ◽

Biological Time ◽

Source Program ◽

Wide Range ◽

Infradian Rhythms ◽

User Friendly

Research on circadian rhythms often requires researchers to estimate period, robustness/power, and phase of the rhythm. These are important to estimate, owing to the fact that they act as readouts of different features of the underlying clock. The commonly used tools, to this end, suffer from being very expensive, having very limited interactivity, being very cumbersome to use, or a combination of these. As a step toward remedying the inaccessibility to users who may not be able to afford them and to ease the analysis of biological time-series data, we have written RhythmicAlly, an open-source program using R and Shiny that has the following advantages: (1) it is free, (2) it allows subjective marking of phases on actograms, (3) it provides high interactivity with graphs, (4) it allows visualization and storing of data for a batch of individuals simultaneously, and (5) it does what other free programs do but with fewer mouse clicks, thereby being more efficient and user-friendly. Moreover, our program can be used for a wide range of ultradian, circadian, and infradian rhythms from a variety of organisms, some examples of which are described here. The first version of RhythmicAlly is available on Github, and we aim to maintain the program with subsequent versions having updated methods of visualizing and analyzing time-series data.

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