Schizophrenic: forever young?
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* Corresponding author: Nicolas Le Novère lenov@ebi.ac.uk
- † Equal contributors
European Bioinformatics Institute, Wellcome Trust Genome Campus, Hinxton, Cambridgeshire CB10 1SD, UK
Genome Medicine 2010, 2:32 doi:10.1186/gm153
Published: 18 May 2010Abstract
Schizophrenia is a multifactorial complex disease with a large impact on society. Many hypotheses have been proposed over the years to explain its causes, and genomics and functional genomic approaches may shed light on the reason behind these controversies and discrepancies. We give an overview of several approaches that have been used to identify the genetic causes and molecular phenotypes of the disease. We focus on a recent microarray analysis by Torkamani and colleagues on the evolution of regulatory networks in normal and schizophrenic brains. Combining the conclusion of that study with the prevalent hypotheses of schizophrenia, we suggest that the schizophrenic brain might resemble a juvenile brain.