Abstract
The dysbindin-1 and neuregulin-1 (NRG-1) genes are related to schizophrenia. Expression studies in postmortem brains have revealed lower expression of dysbindin-1 and higher expression of NRG-1 in brain tissue from subjects with schizophrenia. In addition to the difficulty of sampling, the use of postmortem brain tissues is not ideal because these tissues are heterogeneous with respect to biochemical parameters, lifetime history of medications and physiological status at the time of death. In contrast, medication and environmental influences that could mask the genetic basis of differences in RNA expression are removed in immortalized lymphocytes by culturing. Only a few microarray analysis studies using immortalized lymphocytes in schizophrenia have been reported, and whether immortalized lymphocytes are an appropriate alternative to neuronal tissue remains controversial. In this study, we measured the mRNA expression levels of dysbindin-1, NRG-1 and two other genes (NPY1R and GNAO1) in immortalized lymphocytes from 45 patients with schizophrenia and 45 controls using real-time quantitative reverse transcriptase-PCR. No difference was observed between patients and controls with respect to the expression of dysbindin-1, NRG-1, NPY1R or GNAO1 gene. Our findings suggest that the gene expression profile of immortalized lymphocyte from schizophrenic patients is different from that in postmortem brain tissue at least with respect to the dysbindin-1 and NRG-1 genes.
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Acknowledgements
We thank all the individuals who participated in this study. This work was funded in part by Grants-in-Aid from the Japanese Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare (H19-kokoro-002); the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (18689030); CREST of JST; and the Japan Foundation for Neuroscience and Mental Health and by a Grant-aid for Scientific Research on Priority Areas -Research on Pathomechanisms of Brain Disorders- from the MEXT (18023045). Postmortem brains were kindly donated by the Stanley Foundation.
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Yamamori, H., Hashimoto, R., Verrall, L. et al. Dysbindin-1 and NRG-1 gene expression in immortalized lymphocytes from patients with schizophrenia. J Hum Genet 56, 478–483 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1038/jhg.2011.40
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/jhg.2011.40
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