GENE CO-EXPRESSION REVEALS PATHWAYS OF CONVERGENCE OF SCHIZOPHRENIA RISK GENES

Schizophrenia (SCZ) is associated with genetic factors, and specific risk loci have recently been identified. Still, the biology and functional or clinical translation of SCZ risk genes remain largely unknown. At least some of the Psychiatric Genomic Consortium (PGC) genetic variants control gene expression. Since the expression of individual genes is co-regulated and results in the co-expression of gene sets, we hypothesized that SCZ risk genes may converge into co-expression pathways which, in turn, may be associated with clinical phenotypes in patients with SCZ. Previous work in microarray post-mortem brain gene expression data shows that co-expression networks have biological plausibility for SCZ