Revisiting Schizophrenia from an Evolutionary Perspective: An Association Study of Recent Evolutionary Markers and Schizophrenia.

ABSTRACT: The persistence of schizophrenia in human populations at a high prevalence and with a large heritability estimate despite reduced fertility and increased mortality rate is a Darwinian paradox. This may be likely if the genomic components that predispose to schizophrenia are also advantageous for the acquisition of important human traits, such as language and cognition. Accordingly, an emerging group of genomic markers of recent evolution in humans, namely human accelerated regions (HARs), since our divergence from chimpanzees, are gaining importance for neurodevelopmental disorders, such as schizophrenia. We hypothesize that variants within HARs may affect the expression of genes under their control, thus contributing to disease etiology. A total of 49 HAR single nucleotide polymorphisms (

SUBMITTER: Bhattacharyya U 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8759809 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature