Beagle's muddy end

circadian biologist, one of its extra rewards is the personal dimension and of historical insights into who said what to whom, when and what the repercussions were. The defining contributions of Colin Pittendrigh, Jurgen Aschoff and Mike Menaker feature as a recurrent theme, whilst past tensions in different camps of circadian biology, and the experimental approaches and results that underpinned them are discussed without bias and so provide a positive lesson on how science can proceed to everyone’s ultimate advantage, even in the face of dispute. And so to the future — where should circadian biology boldly go? To Mars of course, at least in an advisory capacity, where the lengthened solar day of the red planet will push the earth-adapted clocks and the bodies they reside in beyond their normal operating limits. But this is not the real, the final frontier. Circadian biology has even bigger prizes to go for: its integration into clinical practice. The new findings that the circadian clock gates the cell cycle of mammalian tissues, and that disruption of the circadian programme in animals and humans can accelerate tumour progression are crying out “watch this space”. Consolidation of the two great oscillatory timing systems of cells — the cell division cycle and the circadian cycle will be a landmark for biomedicine. As noted by Foster and Kreitzman, however, serious obstacles remain in the way of circadian medicine, not least in simple ignorance and apathy towards circadian factors within most medical schools and ‘Big Pharma’. In putting within this book such an engaging case for clocks at a level ideally pitched for graduates and clinical students, Rhythms of Life is well placed to address this problem it highlights so effectively — it will simply take a little time, but we know all about that by now.