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It is now very well accepted that over the history of life on Earth, organisms ranging from bacteria to humans have evolved mechanisms that can quite efficiently measure passage of time that help in restricting behavior, physiology and metabolism to certain times of the day, thereby generating overt rhythms. In this article, we discuss answers to questions that a naïve but interested reader may ask regarding such intricate biological timing systems. Do we really have biological clocks? And if so, where are they located? How do they work? More importantly, why do we have them, and why is it important to study them? In an attempt to answer these questions, we first discuss studies that demonstrate the endogenous and innate nature of biological rhythms. We then discuss how the mechanisms that generate such rhythms serve as our very own biological clocks to keep time efficiently. Further, we elaborate on the anatomical location of biological clocks, and describe the molecular processes underlying them. Penultimately, we discuss the origins and possible reasons for the existence of such clocks, and finally describe the implications of aberrant and misaligned (out-of-sync with the external environment) clocks on human health.

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-44418-5_27

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