Morning and evening peaks of activity rely on different clock neurons of the Drosophila brain

In Drosophila, a ‘clock’ situated in the brain controls circadian rhythms of locomotor activity. This clock relies on several groups of neurons that express the Period (PER) protein, including the ventral lateral neurons (LNvs), which express the Pigment-dispersing factor (PDF) neuropeptide, and the PDF-negative dorsal lateral neurons (LNds)1. In normal cycles of day and night, adult flies exhibit morning and evening peaks of activity1,2; however, the contribution of the different clock neurons to the rest–activity pattern remains unknown. Here, we have used targeted expression of PER to restore the clock function of specific subsets of lateral neurons in arrhythmic per0 mutant flies. We show that PER expression restricted to the LNvs only restores the morning activity, whereas expression of PER in both the LNvs and LNds also restores the evening activity. This provides the first neuronal bases for ‘morning’ and ‘evening’ oscillators in the Drosophila brain. Furthermore, we show that the LNvs alone can generate 24 h activity rhythms in constant darkness, indicating that the morning oscillator is sufficient to drive the circadian system.