Schizophrenia is a complex disorder that occurs in around 1% of adults. It is characterized by disordered thinking and speech, hallucinations, paranoid delusions and impairments of perception of reality.
It has generally been assumed that Schizophrenia would be caused by mutations in a very specific cluster of genes or even from high frequency genetic mutations, although scientists have never really had a full understanding of the role of genetics or environmental factors in causing it, until now.
Researchers looking at the DNA of people with schizophrenia compared to that of people without the disorder found more deletions and duplications across the sequence. Healthy people were found to only have 5% of the deletions and duplications present, while those with the disorder had them present in 15%. These disrupted genes are often essential in pathways leading towards normal brain development, and can effect neuronal growth and communication.
So instead of having one particular set of genes in which mutation causes schizophrenia, it is a case of any number of a few hundred or so genes that could mutate to cause it. And for different people these mutations occur in no particular genes, it’s just an overall increase in DNA mutation rates.
More info:
http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2008/03/28/2201595.htm?site=science&topic=latest
By Tom Beioley
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