Mapping the Body's Clock: A World First from Tokyo

The world’s first comprehensive “circadian clock map” has been completed in Tokyo. A research team at the Tokyo Metropolitan Institute of Medical Science examined how approximately 19,000 types of proteins fluctuate over a 24-hour cycle across 32 organs throughout the mouse body, resulting in the creation of an integrated, body-wide circadian clock map. The findings were published in January 2026 in Molecular Cell, a leading international scientific journal, and have since drawn attention from researchers worldwide.

A defining feature of this study is its unprecedented scale. By employing cutting-edge analytical technologies, the researchers successfully achieved the simultaneous analysis of approximately 74 percent of all proteins across the entire mouse body, thereby shedding light on, for the first time, the mechanisms underlying the organism-wide circadian clock. This technological breakthrough enables a comprehensive understanding of when, where, and which proteins are active throughout the body. The resulting dataset has been made publicly available through an open-access website, enabling researchers around the world to utilize the data.

These research achievements are expected to contribute to advances in future medical care and pharmaceutical development. By gaining a comprehensive understanding of the body-wide circadian clock, it may become possible to identify optimal timing for drug administration and to develop new therapeutic approaches. The research paper is available online. The Japanese press release is provided here.

An interview with the paper’s first author, Dr. Yuta Otobe, can be found on the institute’s website.