The paper:
F.W. Turek et al., "Obesity and metabolic syndrome in circadian Clock mutant mice." Science, 308:1043, 2005. (Cited in 90 papers)
The finding:
Joe Bass and others at Northwestern University found that mice with a mutated Clock gene showed both abnormal circadian rhythms and feeding behavior. Metabolic problems included obesity and abnormally high levels of blood cholesterol.
The surprise:
Circadian variation in insulin secretion and action has long been recognized, says Bass, professor at Evanston Northwestern Healthcare. "What's changed is we now have a new molecular window on pathways that give rise to the observed circadian characteristics in the regulation of glucose homeostasis."
The verdict:
Colleen McClung, a circadian researcher at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, writes via E-mail that she was struck by "the broad range of metabolic phenotypes that are present in the Clock mutants ... It will be interesting to determine how many ...
