Basically, the reason this is not significant is that there is no way to turn gene-disease associations into treatments. At best, it helps you focus on a gene target, but as you can see, this gene's protein product is an important player that has a role far beyond preventing/causing (or affecting the severity of) disease.
What's different (and it's not particularly different) is that this PR is in response to a social media challenge, the research was partly funded by it. Whether that means anything is hard to say- I don't really see ice bucket challenges scaling up to many diseases.
Basically, the reason this is not significant is that there is no way to turn gene-disease associations into treatments. At best, it helps you focus on a gene target, but as you can see, this gene's protein product is an important player that has a role far beyond preventing/causing (or affecting the severity of) disease.
What's different (and it's not particularly different) is that this PR is in response to a social media challenge, the research was partly funded by it. Whether that means anything is hard to say- I don't really see ice bucket challenges scaling up to many diseases.