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Oliver Staehlin, Stephanie Perreau-Lenz, Wolfgang Sommer (Central Institute of Mental Health, Mannheim, Germany)
Alcoholism affects the biological rhythms of behavioural and physiological functions such as sleep and food intake. In addition, clock-genes, essential for the generation of the body's intrinsic circadian rhythm, are implicated in the development of drug addiction and are regulated by drugs of abuse in a day time dependent manner. In the present study, we analyse whole genome expression profiles in the nucleus accumbens, a brain region involved in reward processing, of long-term alcohol-drinking rats at different time points of the light-dark cycle to identify molecular mechanisms of the interaction between circadian rhythm and drug addiction. We apply Partitioning Around Medoids to find genes which undergo a similar transformation of their circadian pattern under the influence of alcohol. These clusters will serve as a basis for further pathway and Gene Ontology analyses.