Publication Date:
2016-01-28
Description:
Schizophrenia is a heritable brain illness with unknown pathogenic mechanisms. Schizophrenia's strongest genetic association at a population level involves variation in the major histocompatibility complex (MHC) locus, but the genes and molecular mechanisms accounting for this have been challenging to identify. Here we show that this association arises in part from many structurally diverse alleles of the complement component 4 (C4) genes. We found that these alleles generated widely varying levels of C4A and C4B expression in the brain, with each common C4 allele associating with schizophrenia in proportion to its tendency to generate greater expression of C4A. Human C4 protein localized to neuronal synapses, dendrites, axons, and cell bodies. In mice, C4 mediated synapse elimination during postnatal development. These results implicate excessive complement activity in the development of schizophrenia and may help explain the reduced numbers of synapses in the brains of individuals with schizophrenia.〈br /〉〈br /〉〈a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4752392/" target="_blank"〉〈img src="https://static.pubmed.gov/portal/portal3rc.fcgi/4089621/img/3977009" border="0"〉〈/a〉 〈a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4752392/" target="_blank"〉This paper as free author manuscript - peer-reviewed and accepted for publication〈/a〉〈br /〉〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Sekar, Aswin -- Bialas, Allison R -- de Rivera, Heather -- Davis, Avery -- Hammond, Timothy R -- Kamitaki, Nolan -- Tooley, Katherine -- Presumey, Jessy -- Baum, Matthew -- Van Doren, Vanessa -- Genovese, Giulio -- Rose, Samuel A -- Handsaker, Robert E -- Schizophrenia Working Group of the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium -- Daly, Mark J -- Carroll, Michael C -- Stevens, Beth -- McCarroll, Steven A -- R01 HG006855/HG/NHGRI NIH HHS/ -- R01 MH077139/MH/NIMH NIH HHS/ -- T32 GM007753/GM/NIGMS NIH HHS/ -- U01 MH105641/MH/NIMH NIH HHS/ -- England -- Nature. 2016 Feb 11;530(7589):177-83. doi: 10.1038/nature16549. Epub 2016 Jan 27.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉Department of Genetics, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts 02115, USA. ; Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research, Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02142, USA. ; MD-PhD Program, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts 02115, USA. ; Department of Neurology, F.M. Kirby Neurobiology Center, Boston Children's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts 02115, USA. ; Program in Cellular and Molecular Medicine, Boston Children's Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts 02115, USA. ; Analytical and Translational Genetics Unit, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts 02114, USA.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26814963" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Keywords:
Alleles
;
Amino Acid Sequence
;
Animals
;
Axons/metabolism
;
Base Sequence
;
Brain/metabolism/pathology
;
Complement C4/chemistry/*genetics
;
Complement Pathway, Classical
;
Dendrites/metabolism
;
Gene Dosage/genetics
;
Gene Expression Regulation/genetics
;
Genetic Predisposition to Disease/*genetics
;
Genetic Variation/*genetics
;
Haplotypes/genetics
;
Humans
;
Major Histocompatibility Complex/genetics
;
Mice
;
Models, Animal
;
Neuronal Plasticity/genetics/physiology
;
Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide/genetics
;
RNA, Messenger/analysis/genetics
;
Risk Factors
;
Schizophrenia/*genetics/pathology
;
Synapses/metabolism
Print ISSN:
0028-0836
Electronic ISSN:
1476-4687
Topics:
Biology
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
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