Chronobiology Connect: Open forum for like minded people interested in Circadian Biology

We are pleased to invite you to the upcoming Chronobiology open forum, 'ChronoConnect', a platform dedicated to exploring the fascinating science of biological rhythms and their impact on health, medicine, and research. The event aims to bring together researchers, academicians, and students to share knowledge, ideas, and recent advancements in the field of chronobiology.

In addition to the meet, we are delighted to announce that a newsletter titled “ChronoPrakriti” will be published as part of this event. We warmly invite you to contribute articles, short communications, or insights related to chronobiology, circadian rhythms, integrative health, or allied areas.

Submission Deadline: 24/04/2026

This is a great opportunity to showcase your work and be a part of an engaging academic initiative.

Event Details:

• Date: 25/04/2026
• Time: 04:00 PM
• Venue: SPM's Prin B V Bhide Foundation for Research, Innovation and Incubation, Pune
• Location: https://maps.app.goo.gl/aQFYEuy6LDyxcxQr6

You are also invited to join our community using the link below and kindly share it with others interested in chronobiology:
Join the Community via: https://forms.gle/ZvYytawV7nr7ugog9 

We look forward to your active participation and valuable contributions.

For more details:

Email: spm.bhidefoundation@gmail.com

Phone: 8421479820

Want To Handle Stress Better? Science Recommends These Surprising Daily Habits: These are nothing but a Circadian code!

Psychological flexibility is the ability to adjust your thoughts, emotions, and actions as situations change, while staying balanced and constructive. Rather than feeling trapped by stress, people with stronger psychological flexibility can pause, understand what they are feeling, and respond in a healthier way.

“You might know someone who stays cool under pressure,” said Lina Begdache, an associate professor of health and wellness studies and lead author of the study. “The kind of person who misses a flight and, instead of panicking, calmly adapts to the situation. This person may still feel stressed, but they’re better able to manage it through psychological flexibility.”

Key findings from the study include:

• People who sleep less than six hours tend to have lower resilience and lower psychological flexibility
• Eating breakfast five or more times a week is associated with greater resilience through psychological flexibility processes
• Exercise, even for 20 minutes or more, is associated with psychological flexibility and resilience

By contrast, low psychological flexibility, or rigid thinking and behavior, is associated with unhealthy habits such as eating fast food and not getting enough sleep.

Begdache said psychological flexibility helps people “step back” and use the brain’s resources to better understand and process emotions. She also said people may be able to strengthen that flexibility through improvements in diet and lifestyle.

“The new finding here is that diet and lifestyle don’t just make you resilient by themselves. They help you build the psychological flexibility, which, in turn, makes you a resilient person.”

Reference: “Dietary and lifestyle factors and resilience: the role of psychological flexibility as a mediator” by Lina Begdache, Jason Cherry and Alexander J. Talkachov, 30 December 2025, Journal of American College Health.
DOI: 10.1080/07448481.2025.2597907

New drug resets the body clock and cuts jet lag recovery nearly in half

Scientists have identified a promising new compound, Mic-628, that can reliably shift the body’s internal clock forward—something that’s notoriously hard to do. By targeting a key clock-control protein, Mic-628 jump-starts the gene that sets daily rhythms, synchronizing both the brain’s master clock and clocks throughout the body. In mice experiencing simulated jet lag, a single dose cut recovery time nearly in half.

The researchers found that Mic-628 works by attaching to CRY1, a protein that normally suppresses clock gene activity. This interaction encourages the formation of a larger molecular complex known as CLOCK-BMAL1-CRY1-Mic-628. Once formed, this complex switches on Per1 by acting at a specific DNA site called a "dual E-box." Through this mechanism, Mic-628 shifts the timing of both the brain's master clock located in the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) and clocks in other organs, including the lungs. Notably, these clock shifts occurred together and did not depend on when the compound was given.

Adjusting to earlier schedules, such as traveling east across time zones or working night shifts, requires the body clock to move forward. This type of adjustment is typically slower and more stressful for the body than delaying the clock. Common approaches like light exposure or melatonin depend heavily on precise timing and often produce uneven results. Because Mic-628 consistently advances the clock regardless of dosing time, it offers a fundamentally different drug-based approach to circadian reset.

The researchers plan to continue studying Mic-628 to better understand its safety and effectiveness in additional animal studies and in humans. Since the compound reliably moves the body clock forward through a clearly defined biological pathway, it could become a model "smart drug" for addressing jet lag, sleep problems linked to shift work, and other disorders caused by circadian misalignment.

https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2509943123

Makar Sankranti - Symbol of incorporating science of seasonal rhythms into traditions

The earth's axial rotation leads to seasonal changes as the amount of sunrays in the hemispheres varies due to it. The earth is tilted 23.5 degrees on its axis which impacts days and nights in each hemisphere. The term Makar Sankranti came into existence based on Makar Mandal. Makar Sankranti means the sun reaching the southern end or northern start point of the ecliptic. Since ancient times, when the sun entered the Makar Mandal and reached this Dakshinayanant or Uttarayanarambh point from the southernmost end of the ecliptic, the day became the shortest (December 21 or 22). Now the sun enters the Makar Mandal in mid-January, the reason is that due to the solstice movement, the Dakshinayanant (or Uttarayanarambh) point has now moved towards the west to the Sagittarius.

Makar Sankranti marks the transition of the sun into the Tropic of Capricorn, indicating the northward journey. This change happens after the winter solstice when the days start getting longer in the northern hemisphere, ringing in summer. As the sun moves towards the Tropic of Cancer, solar energy increases in the northern hemisphere, which affects the climate, agricultural cycle and biological rhythms. This also encourages rejuvenation and vitality in people of the northern hemisphere, as the sunray is known to be a stable source of vitamin D. During this period, people traditionally bask in the sun or spend more time in the sun which helps the body produce more vitamin D that strengthens bone health and immunity.

https://www.etvbharat.com/en/!lifestyle/astronomer-explains-science-behind-maha-kumbh-and-sankranti-enn25011403185

Forget Melatonin: The Jet Lag Cure Born from NASA-Inspired Research That Resets Your Body Faster!

In an era of hypermobility, where business meetings in Berlin follow red-eyes from Boston and leisure travelers chase sunsets across hemispheres, jet lag remains a stubborn adversary. Despite decades of research and a booming wellness industry promising quick fixes, the human body continues to resist the tyranny of time zone shifts.

What makes jet lag so insidious is its unpredictability. Two travelers on the same flight can experience vastly different symptoms. Age, chronotype, direction of travel, and even genetics play a role. Yet, the core conflict remains universal: our circadian rhythms, finely tuned to the 24-hour cycle of light and dark, don’t take kindly to abrupt changes.

Now, a growing body of research is shedding new light on how to outsmart this biological inertia. From strategic light exposure to pre-flight sleep adjustments, scientists are uncovering practical, evidence-based strategies that could finally offer weary travelers a fighting chance.

The single most powerful tool in the jet lag arsenal? Light. Exposure to natural light is the primary cue that synchronizes our internal clocks with the external environment. Morning sunlight can help advance the circadian rhythm, making it easier to adjust to eastward travel, while evening light can delay it for westward shifts.

https://indiandefencereview.com/forget-melatonin-the-jet-lag-cure-born-from-nasa-inspired-research-that-resets-your-body-faster/

Sleep cycles process memories

Memory replay during sleep probably facilitates the transfer of memories from intermediate storage in the hippocampus to long-term storage in the cortex. In a paper published in Neuron, Bollmann, Baracskay et al. reveal that memories are not static during this process, but are instead transformed into their long-term state during the sleep period. The authors tracked spatial memory ensembles in the hippocampus of rats across acquisition, a prolonged (17–20 h) sleep/rest period and recall the following day. 

Acquisition and recall induced distinct neuronal ensembles, and ensemble activity gradually evolved from an acquisition-like to a recall-like state during sleep. Interestingly, non-REM sleep pushed memory drift towards recall, whereas REM sleep counteracted this drift. These findings echo prior work that indicated a crucial role for non-REM sleep in consolidation and also offer intriguing clues regarding the potentially distinct roles of non-REM and REM sleep in this process.

Reference: Neuron https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2025.02.025 

The probiotic home: Where microbes are welcome guests!

Most of the world’s population lives in cities, and many people spend most of their days inside. A 2001 survey1 found that respondents in the United States spent 87% of their time inside sealed buildings, and a further 6% in vehicles.

The design of human structures, such as homes and offices, has been driven by a desire to keep humans isolated from animals, dirt and microbes. But scientists exploring probiotic indoor environments point to studies that suggest there are health benefits to mingling with microbes, particularly for young children.

Exposure to dust, farm animals and their associated microbes can have a positive effect on children’s immune systems. “People who grow up on a farm have a 50% reduction in the likelihood of developing atopy,” says Jack Gilbert, a pediatrician and microbiome researcher at the University of California, San Diego. Atopy, which causes people to overproduce certain kinds of antibody, can manifest as conditions such as asthma, dermatitis and food allergy.

If children’s developing immune systems need exposure to environmental microbes — and if such exposures turn out to have benefits for adults, too — then urban dwellers will often miss out.We can compare modern architecture to antibiotics. Just as the widespread use of these drugs has driven antibiotic resistance, architecture has “created its own monsters. There is evidence that autoimmune diseases, allergies and metabolic diseases, such as obesity, are influenced by the microbes that people are exposed to, and that the diversity of these microbes is decreasing.

Microbiome health and circadian health are interconnected!!!

 https://www.nature.com/immersive/d41586-025-03291-2/index.html?utm_source=Live+Audience&utm_campaign=a49d41753b-nature-briefing-daily-20251014&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-33f35e09ea-49956820