The circadian clock enhances fitness through temporal organization of plant gene expression, metabolism and physiology. Two recent studies, one in BMC Evolutionary Biology, demonstrate through phylogenetic analysis of the CCA1/LHY and TOC1/PRR gene families that the common ancestor of monocots and eudicots had components sufficient to construct a circadian clock consisting of multiple interlocked feedback loops.
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C. Robertson McClung (2010) studied this question.
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