A tipping point in neuropsychiatric genetics

Jon M McClellan; Mary-Claire King

doi:10.1016/j.neuron.2021.04.002

A tipping point in neuropsychiatric genetics

Neuron. 2021 May 5;109(9):1411-1413. doi: 10.1016/j.neuron.2021.04.002.

Authors

Jon M McClellan¹, Mary-Claire King²

Affiliations

¹ Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA.
² Department of Medicine and Department of Genome Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA. Electronic address: mcking@uw.edu.

PMID: 33957066
DOI: 10.1016/j.neuron.2021.04.002

Abstract

Severe neuropsychiatric disorders are so genetically heterogeneous that virtually every unrelated patient harbors different clinically significant alleles. By studying schizophrenia in the Ashkenazi Jewish founder population, Lencz and co-authors identified rare severe alleles each shared by a few patients. Experimental evaluation of an implicated protocadherin allele revealed failure to form homophilic cellular aggregates as a possible mechanism for defective development of neural circuits.

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MeSH terms

Alleles
Cadherins
Gene Frequency
Humans
Jews
Schizophrenia* / genetics

Substances

Cadherins