To my knowledge we are the first to discuss how the stability of the oscillator directly affects bioluminescence recordings, explains Felix Naef, a systems biology professor at EPFL and the Swiss Institute for Experimental Cancer Research. We found that the phosphorylation and transcription rates of a specific gene are key determinants of the stability of our internal body clocks.

This result is consistent with recent research from the University of California, San Francisco involving families whose circadian clocks dont tick quite right. These families clocks are shorter than 24 hours, and they also have mutations in oscillator-related genes. The current results shed light on how a genetically-linked phosphorylation event gone wrong could lead to inaccurate timing of our body clockworks.