The mammalian circadian clock relies on the master genes CLOCK and BMAL1 to drive rhythmic gene expression and regulate biological functions under circadian control. Here we show that rhythmic CLOCK:BMAL1 DNA binding promotes rhythmic chromatin opening. Mechanisms include CLOCK:BMAL1 binding to nucleosomes and rhythmic chromatin modification; e.g., incorporation of the histone variant H2A.Z. This rhythmic chromatin remodeling mediates the rhythmic binding of other transcription factors adjacent to CLOCK:BMAL1, suggesting that the activity of these other transcription factors contributes to the genome-wide CLOCK:BMAL1 heterogeneous transcriptional output. These data therefore indicate that the clock regulation of transcription relies on the rhythmic regulation of chromatin accessibility and suggest that the concept of pioneer function extends to acute gene regulation.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 32. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 29 April 2026.
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#1,518,477
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#271
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#14,311
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Outputs of similar age from Genes & Development
#4
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Altmetric has tracked 32,686,267 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 95th percentile: it's in the top 5% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 6,434 research outputs from this source. They typically receive more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 9.4. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 95% of its peers.
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