BioClocks UK: Supporting The Biological Rhythm Research Community To Deliver Impact

The UK has a thriving research community that studies biological rhythms, most notably, the internal 24 hour body clock that most of us recognise as dictating, among many other things, our regular sleep patterns. However, the 24 hour body clock regulates circadian (Latin 'circa', about, 'diem', day) rhythms in all aspects of behaviour, physiology and metabolism and is a ubiquitous characteristic of the life of animals, plants, fungi and some bacteria that inhabit the surface of our rotating planet.

Organisms have thus adapted their lifestyles to anticipate the relentless 24 hour cycles of light and dark, warmth and cold. Consequently, it is hardly surprising that disruption of the body clock can have many adverse effects on health and well-being and this is observed most acutely in the 20% of the UK workforce that works chronic shifts. UK and international funding agencies, public and private, have invested £160M in UK research on biological clocks/sleep in the last 11-years reflecting the importance of the biological clock in human, animal and plant health, sleep, pharmacology, lighting in the workplace and alertness, mental health, agriculture, entomology etc with the recognition of enormous economic cost that disrupted clocks have on our 24-hour society.

Three of our American collaborators who identified the molecular basis of all animal clocks were awarded the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, further acknowledging the immense scientific contribution of chronobiology.

Despite this success, a major problem of UK research, not just in chronobiology, is translating that research into impact. A principal investigator of a research grant has to focus on getting the work done and as an individual may find it quite difficult to devote the necessary time to disseminate and publicise the results to appropriate interest groups and stake holders and may even not be fully aware of who might represent the relevant bodies.

BioClocks UK represents researchers whose interests lie in the study of biological rhythms. Due to goodwill and hard work of a few volunteers from various universities and institutes, BioClocks UK was established this year as an informal network to support the UK clock research community, with a website and community agreement to foster outreach, training and to stimulate impact.

We propose to place BioClocks UK on a firmer footing by employing a fulltime coordinator who will unlock our communication potential to relevant stake holders and raise awareness of the translatability of clock research into educational, medical, commercial and national policy environments. We have strong support from the equivalent European, American and Japanese organisations, which are working on these same policy areas, for example presenting the health and social evidence that put Daylight Saving Time on hold in Japan.

The research community is key to these aims, so we will also support researchers more directly. The coordinator will coordinate networks of UK chronobiology groups by arranging meetings to identify mutual research interests thereby helping to define priorities for further collaborative funding. He/she will coordinate training for researchers in data management, policy engagement, media interactions and maintain the BioClocks UK web resources.

Bioclocks UK has an important message to deliver to interest groups, including government, and translating our research into action will far outstrip, even simply in economic terms, any investment in a single research proposal. A coordinated and focused effort by the UK clock community to foster engagement with stakeholders eclipses in scale what could be achieved by any individual or group of investigators who have limited time to devote to impact.