Mol Cell. 2011 Sep 2;43(5):695-7. doi: 10.1016/j.molcel.2011.08.015.

A new twist on clock protein phosphorylation: a conformational change leads to protein degradation.

Author information

1: Department of Biology, National Center for Behavioral Genomics, Brandeis University, 415 South Street, Waltham, MA 02454, USA.

Abstract

Progressive phosphorylation of circadian clock proteins is a hallmark of time-keeping. In this issue of Molecular Cell, Querfurth et al. (2011) demonstrate that phosphorylation of Neurospora FRQ induces a conformational change, which can account for its temporally gated degradation.