Protein Interaction Networks Link Schizophrenia Risk Loci to Synaptic Function.

ABSTRACT: Schizophrenia is a severe and highly heritable psychiatric disorder affecting approximately 1% of the population. Genome-wide association studies have identified 108 independent genetic loci with genome-wide significance but their functional importance has yet to be elucidated. Here, we develop a novel strategy based on network analysis of protein-protein interactions (PPI) to infer biological function associated with variants most strongly linked to illness risk. We show that the schizophrenia loci are strongly linked to synaptic transmission (P _FWE < .001) and ion transmembrane transport (P _FWE = .03), but not to ontological categories previously found to be shared across psychiatric illnesses. We demonstrate that brain expression of risk-linked genes within the ide

SUBMITTER: Schwarz E 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5049524 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature