Temperature-compensated chemical reactions.

Circadian rhythms are daily oscillations in behaviors that persist in constant light/dark conditions with periods close to 24 h. A striking feature of these rhythms is that their periods remain fairly constant over a wide range of physiological temperatures, a feature called temperature compensation. Although circadian rhythms have been associated with periodic oscillations in mRNA and protein levels, the question of how to construct a network of chemical reactions that is temperature compensated remains unanswered. We discuss a general framework for building such a network.