Circadian rhythms is one of the few biological processes that has been well characterized genetically and mechanistically. If I had to guess there are probably

Circadian rhythms is one of the few biological processes that has been well characterized genetically and mechanistically. If I had to guess there are probably way more genes/DNA elements controlling eye color than genes controlling circadian rhythms. In some biological systems, just a handful of genes can make a circadian clock. For cyanobacteria, it's literally three proteins (KaiA, KaiB, KaiC) and the robust periodic phenomenon can be reconstituted in a test tube. For mouse the current paradigm of the circadian clock involves a handful of genes (Figure 6 in their paper). Randomly picking a gene and disrupting it most likely will not disrupt the circadian rhythm of the animal. The novel finding in this paper is that they are proposing a new gene, one that does not code for a protein, seems to also regulate the circadian clock. This changes how we think of the circuit that wires the circadian clock. I am impressed that this study took nine years. One must be deeply interested in the topic to sustain that type of effort for a story. I can imagine many scientists dropping the project long before nine years in search of lower hanging fruit.