Multiple Feedback Loops in Circadian Cycles: Robustness and Entrainment as Selection Criteria

This paper discusses the contribution of an additional feedback loop to the entrainment and the robustness of a circadian system. To quantify robustness, we perform a global analysis of the system’s parameter space. We quantify the parameter region where the circuit displays an experimentally observed behavior, under entrainment. This global measure is comleted with a classification based on the phase response curve (PRC). For two models of circadian rhythms, we found that the one with two loops is more robust than the one with a single loop: the two-loop model shows better resilience to parameter perturbations and it has also a larger region where the PRC matches experimental PRCs of circadian oscillators.