ISTOCK, DRAFTER123Psychiatric disorders display common patterns of gene expression, according to a study published today (February 8, 2018) in Science. Researchers have analyzed transcripts within the post-mortem brains of hundreds of people with autism, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, depression, or alcoholism, as well as healthy controls, in order to learn about how gene expression changes within the diseased brain.
“There has always been debate about the defining characteristics of psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia and autism,” says David Amaral, director of research at the MIND (Medical Investigation of Neurodevelopmental Disorders) Institute at the University of California, Davis, who was not involved in the study. “The fact that there is some genetic signature overlap between the disorders indicates that the ambiguity is justified.”
Daniel Geschwind, the University of California, Los Angeles, neurologist who led the work, and his colleagues wanted to determine the molecular signatures for psychiatric disorders, and they thought the transcriptome in the brain could be such a signature, he says. His study reveals common patterns of differential gene expression among the brains of people who had either autism, schizophrenia, or bipolar disorder. ...
