BioProject

Transcriptional analysis of the superior temporal cortex (BA22) in schizophrenia: Pathway insight into disease pathology and drug development Schizophrenia is a highly debilitating psychiatric disorder which is known to have heritable genetic and environmental components. More...

Transcriptional analysis of the superior temporal cortex (BA22) in schizophrenia: Pathway insight into disease pathology and drug development Schizophrenia is a highly debilitating psychiatric disorder which is known to have heritable genetic and environmental components. To gain some insight into the mechanisms underpinning both positive and negative symptoms of the disease, we determined the genome wide expression of mRNA transcripts in post-mortem tissue from the superior temporal cortex (Brodmann Area 22, BA22) in schizophrenic and control patients. The BA22 region is known to mediate the positive pathophysiology of schizophrenia; we compared this to the anterior prefrontal cortex (BA10) from the same subjects, which is known to mediate negative symptoms. Following adjustments for confounding clinical, sample and experimental sources of variation, we carried out gene set enrichment analysis in each region using pathway data. We identified an over-representation of genes involved in cytoskeletal remodelling, neurodevelopment, cell adhesion, cellular signalling, neurotransmission and autophagy. Collectively our analysis indicates a disruption of processes underpinning synaptic plasticity in both regions. Region-specific changes support the dysregulation of distinct pathways in the BA10 and BA22 regions. This may highlight new therapeutic opportunities to treat both negative and positive symptoms of the disease. Overall design: Post-mortem derived BA22 tissue from schizophrenic and control patients were compared. Age, gender, post-mortem delay and pH of brain lysates data were also captured. Less...