title: New findings in the genetics of major psychoses.
abstract: Schizophrenia and bipolar disorder have a largely unknown pathophysiology and etiology, but they are highly heritable. Although linkage and association studies have identified a series of chromosomal regions likely to contain susceptibility genes, progress in identifying causative genes has been largely disappointing. However, rapid technological advances are beginning to lead to new insights. Systematic genome-wide association and follow-up studies have reported genome-wide significant association findings of common variants for schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. The risk conferred by individual variants is small, and some variants confer a risk for both disorders. In addition, recent studies have identified rare, large structural variants (copy number variants) that confer a greater risk for schizophrenia. This review summarizes recent developments in genetic research into schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, and discusses possible future directions in this field.
authors.affiliation: Department of Genomics, Life & Brain Centre, University of Bonn, Bonn, Germany. markus.noethen@uni-bonn.de
authors.forename: Markus M
authors.initials: MM
authors.lastname: Nöthen
authors.forename: Vanessa
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Nieratschker
authors.forename: Sven
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Cichon
authors.forename: Marcella
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Rietschel
mesh_terms: D001714:Bipolar Disorder / Q000235:genetics*; D020022:Genetic Predisposition to Disease; D014644:Genetic Variation / Q000235:genetics; D055106:Genome-Wide Association Study / Q000379:methods; D006801:Humans; D012559:Schizophrenia / Q000235:genetics*