Chinese scholars reveal the molecular pathogenesis of mental illness

Chinese scholars reveal the molecular pathogenesis of mental illness

January 07, 2019 Source: Ministry of Science and Technology

On December 14, 2018, the team of Professor Liu Chunyu from the School of Life Sciences of Central South University published a research paper entitled "Transcriptome-wide isoform-level dysregulation in ASD, schizophrenia, and bipolar disorder" on the international top journal Science. The molecular pathological mechanism of mental illness.

Autism (ASD), schizophrenia (SCZ), and bipolar disorder (BD) are common mental illnesses that threaten human health, but the pathogenesis is still unclear; the team uses genes Co-expression network analysis and other methods for gene expression regulation of human brain RNA sequencing data of PsychENCODE project, in order to explore the molecular pathological mechanism of ASD, SCZ and BD. Studies have shown that more than 25% of human brain transcriptomes have differential expression or splicing in mental illness and normal controls, and differential expression regulation of genes is closely related to the occurrence and development of mental illness, and has successfully screened Hundreds of candidate risk genes associated with ASD, SCZ and BD; this outcome will contribute to the etiology and drug development of mental illness.