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Cryptochromes are conserved flavoprotein receptors found throughout the biological kingdom with diversified roles in plant development and entrainment of the circadian clock in animals. Light perception is proposed to occur through flavin radical formation that correlates with biological activity in vivo in both plants and Drosophila. By contrast, mammalian (Type II) cryptochromes regulate the circadian clock independently of light, raising the fundamental question of whether mammalian cryptochromes have evolved entirely distinct signaling mechanisms. Here we show by developmental and transcriptome analysis that Homo sapiens cryptochrome - 1 (HsCRY1) confers biological activity in transgenic expressing Drosophila in darkness, that can in some cases be further stimulated by light. In contrast to all other cryptochromes, purified recombinant HsCRY1 protein was stably isolated in the anionic radical flavin state, containing only a small proportion of oxidized flavin which could be reduced by illumination. We conclude that animal Type I and Type II cryptochromes may both have signaling mechanisms involving formation of a flavin radical signaling state, and that light independent activity of Type II cryptochromes is a consequence of dark accumulation of this redox form in vivo rather than of a fundamental difference in signaling mechanism.
Biodiversity continues to decline in the face of increasing anthropogenic pressures such as habitat destruction, exploitation, pollution and introduction of alien species. Existing global databases of species' threat status or population time series are dominated by charismatic species. The collation of datasets with broad taxonomic and biogeographic extents, and that support computation of a range of biodiversity indicators, is necessary to enable better understanding of historical declines and to project - and avert - future declines. We describe and assess a new database of more than 1.6 million samples from 78 countries representing over 28,000 species, collated from existing spatial comparisons of local-scale biodiversity exposed to different intensities and types of anthropogenic pressures, from terrestrial sites around the world. The database contains measurements taken in 208 (of 814) ecoregions, 13 (of 14) biomes, 25 (of 35) biodiversity hotspots and 16 (of 17) megadiverse countries. The database contains more than 1% of the total number of all species described, and more than 1% of the described species within many taxonomic groups - including flowering plants, gymnosperms, birds, mammals, reptiles, amphibians, beetles, lepidopterans and hymenopterans. The dataset, which is still being added to, is therefore already considerably larger and more representative than those used by previous quantitative models of biodiversity trends and responses. The database is being assembled as part of the PREDICTS project (Projecting Responses of Ecological Diversity In Changing Terrestrial Systems - ). We make site-level summary data available alongside this article. The full database will be publicly available in 2015.