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Peking University, Nov.26, 2011: Recently, Nature Genetics, the world’s leading journal of genetic research, published an article titled “Genome-wide Association Study Identifies a Susceptibility Locus for Schizophrenia in Han Chinese at 11p11.2” online, which was co-authored by researchers from Institute of Mental Health, Peking University (PKU) and other collaborating teams.

Research Associate Yue Weihua from Institute of Mental Health and Dr. Sun Liangdan from Anhui Medical University are the lead authors. Professor Zhang Dai from Institute of Mental Health and Professor Huang Wei from Chinese National Human Genome Center in Shanghai are corresponding authors.

Schizophrenia is a common chronic mental disorder that affects about 1% of the global population. Previous researches suggested that genetic factors may be the most important cause of this disease.

Collaborated with clinicians from domestic mental hospitals, researchers extensively collected clinical and DNA samples of schizophrenics patients in the Han Chinese population, performed a genome-wide association study (GWAS) and carried out repetitive verification before identifying two susceptibility loci for the disease at 6p21-p22.1 and at 11p11.2.

The researchers also explored the unknown function of the susceptibility loci, whose fundamental findings support the hypotheses of abnormal neurodevelopment and abnormal neural circuit connections in schizophrenics patients. The results may lead to further insights into the pathogenesis of schizophrenia and provide scientific evidence for the development of new medicine.

During the course of research, Zhang Dai and Yue Weihua’s research teams designed the whole research, carried out the overall statistical analysis and wrote the article. Cooperating Clinical hospitals were responsible for case diagnosis and sample collection. Huang Wei’s team was in charge of testing on genome-wide single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) microarrays. Zhang Xuejun’s team provided the SNP microarray data of the healthy controls and did part of the genetic statistical work of SNP microarray data, apart from carrying out further research on fruit flies targeted at the newly-discovered susceptibility loci .

In addition, Professor Liu Jianjun from Genome Institute of Singapore gave advice on genetic statistics during the paper revision. Professor Li Tao from Sichuan University also provided valuable suggestions in the initial phase of designing the research.

Written by: Yuan Xinchen
Edited by: Chen Long
Source: PKU News (Chinese)