Analysis of 2,000 Brains Provides Clues to Schizophrenia, Autism

The PsychENCODE project delves into the DNA, RNA, and protein changes related to brain development and neuropsychiatric disorders, but researchers caution it’s just a first step toward treatment.

Written byCatherine Offord

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Researchers from 15 institutions have completed the most comprehensive genomic analysis of the human brain yet, generating new insight into the molecular mechanisms underpinning brain development and neuropsychiatric illnesses such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. The results, produced by the PsychENCODE Consortium, appears in 10 publications yesterday (December 13) in Science, Science Translational Medicine, and Science Advances.

“We’re not claiming in the remotest way to have figured out the underlying mechanism of these diseases, or how you would go about designing drugs,” Yale University’s Mark Gerstein, a molecular biophysicist who was involved in several of the studies, tells Nature. “But we are highlighting genes, pathways and also cell types that are associated with these diseases.”

The PsychENCODE project, which was established in 2015, has so far analyzed more than 2,100 brain bank samples representing people with and without psychiatric disorders. In the latest studies, researchers analyzed DNA, ...

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Meet the Author

Catherine Offord
After undergraduate research with spiders at the University of Oxford and graduate research with ants at Princeton University, Catherine left arthropods and academia to become a science journalist. She has worked in various guises at The Scientist since 2016. As Senior Editor, she wrote articles for the online and print publications, and edited the magazine’s Notebook, Careers, and Bio Business sections. She reports on subjects ranging from cellular and molecular biology to research misconduct and science policy. Find more of her work at her website.
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