title: Gene expression in superior temporal cortex of schizophrenia patients.
abstract: We investigated gene expression pattern obtained from microarray data of 10 schizophrenia patients and 10 control subjects. Brain tissue samples were obtained postmortem; thus, the different ages of the patients at death also allowed a study of the dynamic behavior of the expression patterns over a time frame of many years. We used statistical tests and dimensionality reduction methods to characterize the subset of genes differentially expressed in the two groups. A set of 10 genes were significantly downregulated, and a larger set of 40 genes were upregulated in the schizophrenia patients. Interestingly, the set of upregulated genes includes a large number of genes associated with gene transcription (zinc finger proteins and histone methylation) and apoptosis. We furthermore identified genes with a significant trend correlating with age in the control (MLL3) or the schizophrenia group (SOX5, CTRL). Assessments of correlations of other genes with the disorder (RRM1) or with the duration of medication could not be resolved, because all patients were medicated. This hypothesis-free approach uncovered a series of genes differentially expressed in schizophrenia that belong to a number of distinct cell functions, such as apoptosis, transcriptional regulation, cell motility, energy metabolism and hypoxia.
authors.affiliation: Institute for Pharmacy and Molecular Biotechnology, University of Heidelberg, Im Neuenheimer Feld 364, 69120, Heidelberg, Germany.
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Sellmann
authors.forename: L
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Villarín Pildaín
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Schmitt
authors.forename: F
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Leonardi-Essmann
authors.forename: P F
authors.initials: PF
authors.lastname: Durrenberger
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Spanagel
authors.forename: T
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Arzberger
authors.forename: H
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Kretzschmar
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Zink
authors.forename: O
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Gruber
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Herrera-Marschitz
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Reynolds
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Falkai
authors.forename: P J
authors.initials: PJ
authors.lastname: Gebicke-Haerter
authors.forename: F
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Matthäus
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D005260:Female; D015870:Gene Expression / Q000502:physiology*; D020869:Gene Expression Profiling; D005786:Gene Expression Regulation / Q000235:genetics*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D020411:Oligonucleotide Array Sequence Analysis; D025341:Principal Component Analysis; D012559:Schizophrenia / Q000473:pathology*; D013702:Temporal Lobe / Q000378:metabolism / Q000503:physiopathology*