A protein interaction based model for schizophrenia study.
BACKGROUND
Schizophrenia is a complex disease with multiple factors contributing to its pathogenesis. In addition to environmental factors, genetic factors may also increase susceptibility. In other words, schizophrenia is a highly heritable disease. Some candidate genes have been deduced on the basis of their known function with others found on the basis of chromosomal location. Individuals with multiple candidate genes may have increased risk. However it is not clear what kind of gene combinations may produce the disease phenotype. Their collective effect remains to be studied.


RESULTS
Most pathways except metabolic pathways are rich in protein-protein interactions (PPIs). Thus, the PPI network contains pathway information, even though the upstream-downstream relation of PPI is yet to be explored. Here we have constructed a PPI sub-network by extracting the nearest neighbour of the 36 reported candidate genes described in the literature. Although these candidate genes were discovered by different approaches, most of the proteins formed a cluster. Two major protein interaction modules were identified on the basis of the pairwise distance among the proteins in this sub-network. The large and small clusters might play roles in synaptic transmission and signal transduction, respectively, based on gene ontology annotation. The protein interactions in the synaptic transmission cluster were used to explain the interaction between the NRG1 and CACNG2 genes, which was found by both linkage and association studies. This working hypothesis is supported by the co-expression analysis based on public microarray gene expression.


CONCLUSIONS
On the basis of the protein interaction network, it appears that the NRG1-triggered NMDAR protein internalization and the CACNG2 mediated AMPA receptor recruiting may act together in the glutamatergic signalling process. Since both the NMDA and AMPA receptors are calcium channels, this process may regulate the influx of Ca2+. Reducing the cation influx might be one of the disease mechanisms for schizophrenia. This PPI network analysis approach combined with the support from co-expression analysis may provide an efficient way to propose pathogenetic mechanisms for various highly heritable diseases.
Hsu
Pei-Chun
PC
Institute of Biomedical Informatics, National Yang-Ming University, Taiwan. pchsu@ym.edu.tw
Yang
Ueng-Cheng
UC
Shih
Kuan-Hui
KH
Liu
Chih-Min
CM
Liu
Yu-Li
YL
Hwu
Hai-Gwo
HG
D015220:Calcium Channels / Q000235:genetics; D016000:Cluster Analysis; D019295:Computational Biology / Q000379:methods*; D020022:Genetic Predisposition to Disease; D006801:Humans; D009419:Nerve Tissue Proteins / Q000235:genetics; D020890:Neuregulin-1; D020411:Oligonucleotide Array Sequence Analysis; D010363:Pattern Recognition, Automated; D010641:Phenotype; D025941:Protein Interaction Mapping; D012307:Risk Factors; D012559:Schizophrenia / Q000235:genetics* / Q000378:metabolism* / Q000628:therapy; D015398:Signal Transduction; D013569:Synapses / Q000378:metabolism
C491912:CACNG2 protein, human; D015220:Calcium Channels; C094131:NRG1 protein, human; D009419:Nerve Tissue Proteins; D020890:Neuregulin-1