As if the science of how genetics leads to disease isn’t already complex enough, researchers in Seattle and Long Island, N.Y., say individuals appear to develop schizophrenia from a varying smorgasbord of bad genes rather than common genetic flaws. Scientists at the University of Washington and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory report in Friday’s edition of Science magazine that multiple errors or deletions in a person’s genetic code, or DNA, can lead to schizophrenia — a psychiatric illness characterized by delusions and disordered thinking that today affects one out of every 100 people. The finding that multiple genes are involved is, by itself, not surprising since other diseases or disorders are, or strongly appear to be, the result of many flaws rather than just a single bad gene. That fits nicely within the standard dogma of genetics. What is surprising, challenging to the dogma and perhaps confusing to many experts who study the interplay between genetics and neuroscience, is that the UW-Cold Spring Harbor team found strong evidence that it’s usually not the same set of genes going bad in a person who develops schizophrenia. ‘It’s different genes in different people,’ said Dr. Jon ‘Jack’ McClellan, a […]