title: A network medicine approach to psychiatric genetics.
abstract: The major psychiatric disorders are complex in nature, meaning that they are influenced by multiple environmental and genetic exposures that perturb the intricate cellular network, resulting in disease. In general, psychiatric diseases are highly heritable but also have important environmental etiologies. Environmental influences include neonatal exposures, social environments, psychological mechanisms, and abnormal functioning of the neurotransmitter system. Molecular influences can be identified using many data types including genomics, epigenomics, transcriptomics, metabolomics, and proteomics. The emerging field of network medicine offers a new approach to explore the complexities of disease development in a framework that considers a holistic, rather than a reductionist viewpoint. In this review we explain a general framework of how the network medicine approach can provide valuable insight into understanding important molecular mechanisms that contribute to the pathogenesis of psychiatric disorders.
authors.affiliation: Department of Network Medicine, Channing Laboratories, Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts.
authors.forename: Jessica
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Lasky-Su
mesh_terms: D053263:Gene Regulatory Networks / Q000235:genetics*; D023281:Genomics; D006801:Humans; D001523:Mental Disorders / Q000235:genetics* / Q000628:therapy*
keywords: network medicine; omics; systems biology