Gene/Protein Disease Symptom Drug Enzyme Compound
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Query: UMLS:C0036341 (schizophrenia)
 60,220 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

Schizophrenia and bipolar disorder are common diseases caused by multiple genes that disrupt brain circuits. While great progress has been made in identifying schizophrenia susceptibility genes, these studies have left two major unanswered mechanistic questions: is there a core biochemical mechanism that these genes regulate, and what are the electrophysiological consequences of the altered gene expression? Because clinical studies implicate abnormalities in neuronal networks, we developed a system for studying the neurophysiology of neuronal networks in vitro where the role of candidate disease genes can be rapidly assayed. Using this system we focused on three postsynaptic proteins DISC1, TNIK and PSD-93/DLG2 each of which is encoded by a schizophrenia susceptibility gene. We also examined the utility of this assay system in bipolar disorder (BD), which has a strong genetic overlap with schizophrenia, by examining the bipolar disorder susceptibility gene Dctn5. The global neuronal network firing behavior of primary cultures of mouse hippocampus neurons was examined on multi-electrode arrays (MEAs) and genes of interest were knocked down using RNAi interference. Measurement of multiple neural network parameters demonstrated phenotypes for these genes compared with controls. Moreover, the different genes disrupted network properties and showed distinct and overlapping effects. These data show multiple susceptibility genes for complex psychiatric disorders, regulate neural network physiology and demonstrate a new assay system with wide application.
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PMID:Knockdown of mental disorder susceptibility genes disrupts neuronal network physiology in vitro. 2144 Jun 32

Antagonists of the N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA)-type glutamate receptor induce psychosis in healthy individuals and exacerbate schizophrenia symptoms in patients. In this study we have produced an animal model of NMDA receptor hypofunction by chronically treating rats with low doses of the NMDA receptor antagonist MK-801. Subsequently, we performed an expression study and identified 20 genes showing altered expression in the brain of these rats compared with untreated animals. We then explored whether the human orthologs of these genes are associated with schizophrenia in the largest schizophrenia genome-wide association study published to date, and found evidence for association for 4 out of the 20 genes: SF3B1, FOXP1, DLG2 and VGLL4. Interestingly, three of these genes, FOXP1, SF3B1 and DLG2, have previously been implicated in neurodevelopmental disorders.
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PMID:Expression analysis in a rat psychosis model identifies novel candidate genes validated in a large case-control sample of schizophrenia. 2646 Apr 80

PSD-95 associated PSD proteins play a critical role in regulating the density and activity of glutamate receptors. Numerous previous studies have shown an association between the genes that encode these proteins and schizophrenia (SZ) and autism spectrum disorders (ASD), which share a substantial portion of genetic risks. We sequenced the protein-encoding regions of DLG1, DLG2, DLG4, DLGAP1, DLGAP2, and SynGAP in 562 cases (370 SZ and 192 ASD patients) on the Ion PGM platform. We detected 26 rare (minor allele frequency <1%), non-synonymous mutations, and conducted silico functional analysis and pedigree analysis when possible. Three variants, G344R in DLG1, G241S in DLG4, and R604C in DLGAP2, were selected for association analysis in an independent sample set of 1315 SZ patients, 382 ASD patients, and 1793 healthy controls. Neither DLG4-G241S nor DLGAP2-R604C was detected in any samples in case or control sets, whereas one additional SZ patient was found that carried DLG1-G344R. Our results suggest that rare missense mutations in the candidate PSD genes may increase susceptibility to SZ and/or ASD. These findings may strengthen the theory that rare, non-synonymous variants confer substantial genetic risks for these disorders.
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PMID:Resequencing and Association Analysis of Six PSD-95-Related Genes as Possible Susceptibility Genes for Schizophrenia and Autism Spectrum Disorders. 2727 53

Schizophrenia (SCZ) is associated with differences in subcortical brain volumes and intracranial volume (ICV). However, little is known about the underlying etiology of these brain alterations. Here, we explored whether brain structure volumes and SCZ share genetic risk factors. Using conditional false discovery rate (FDR) analysis, we integrated genome-wide association study (GWAS) data on SCZ (n = 82315) and GWAS data on 7 subcortical brain volumes and ICV (n = 11840). By conditioning the FDR on overlapping associations, this statistical approach increases power to discover genetic loci. To assess the credibility of our approach, we studied the identified loci in larger GWAS samples on ICV (n = 26577) and hippocampal volume (n = 26814). We observed polygenic overlap between SCZ and volumes of hippocampus, putamen, and ICV. Based on conjunctional FDR < 0.05, we identified 2 loci shared between SCZ and ICV implicating genes FOXO3 (rs10457180) and ITIH4 (rs4687658), 2 loci shared between SCZ and hippocampal volume implicating SLC4A10 (rs4664442) and SPATS2L (rs1653290), and 2 loci shared between SCZ and volume of putamen implicating DCC (rs4632195) and DLG2 (rs11233632). The loci shared between SCZ and hippocampal volume or ICV had not reached significance in the primary GWAS on brain phenotypes. Proving our point of increased power, 2 loci did reach genome-wide significance with ICV (rs10457180) and hippocampal volume (rs4664442) in the larger GWAS. Three of the 6 identified loci are novel for SCZ. Altogether, the findings provide new insights into the relationship between SCZ and brain structure volumes, suggesting that their genetic architectures are not independent.
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PMID:Genetic Overlap Between Schizophrenia and Volumes of Hippocampus, Putamen, and Intracranial Volume Indicates Shared Molecular Genetic Mechanisms. 2913 50