Kay and collaborators from the VA Medical Center in San Diego and the Scripps Clinic have identified several patients with serious sleep disorders as well as families in the San Diego area who have shown familial traits for the same disorders. First they will look for abnormalities in the clock genes and then try to develop genetic tests to identify them. In some forms of epilepsy, the occurrence of seizures is circadian. It may also play a role in bipolar disease. If we can show which types of these diseases are due to a malfunction of the circadian system, we can give physicians a new diagnostic tool to help their patients.
People take widely different paths to become scientists.
Steve Kay seems to have taken a mostly circuitous one, from the tide pools of the English Channel to the blue-green waters of the Sea of Cortez, from plant to human and back again. Perhaps his most tantalizing discovery is that the line between plant life and human existence is a great deal finer than we ever imagined.