On Aug. 11, 1999, researchers led by Stanford’s Emmanuel Mignot, MD, PhD, associate professor of psychiatry, used a technique called positional cloning to pinpoint the gene in dogs, one of the few species besides humans known to develop narcolepsy.

The findings will not only help the hundred of thousands of people worldwide who suffer from narcolepsy, but in time it will shed light on two of the biggest mysteries in sleep research: how and why we sleep.