Although DISC1 is multifunctional, its role for neurite outgrowth has been substantially characterized for the past couple of years (Ozeki et al., 2003; Miyoshi et al., 2003; Kamiya et al., 2006). These studies indicated that DISC1 is involved in neurite outgrowth by more than one mechanism, such as interactions with NUDEL/NDEL1 and FEZ1.

These two papers from Kaibuchi’s lab provide further understanding of how DISC1 is involved in neuronal outgrowth. Kaibuchi’s group identified kinesin heavy chain of kinesin-1 as a novel interactor of DISC1. In their papers, a novel role for DISC1, to link kinesin-1 (microtubule-dependent and plus-end directed motor) to several cellular molecules, including NUDEL, LIS1, 14-3-3, and Grb2, is reported. DISC1 and kinesin-1 are, therefore, responsible to sort Grb2 to the distal part of axons where Grb2...  Read more

View all comments by Akira Sawa

Two recent back-to-back papers, published this month in Journal of Neuroscience, highlight the value of protein-protein interactions in determining the biological role of a key schizophrenia risk factor, DISC1, in processes that are important for the proper development of neurons.

Key questions need to be addressed once having established a set of interactors for a given protein. First, where do these proteins interact on the target molecule? Second, do these interactions take place at the same time (i.e., do they form a complex)? Third, in what context do these interactions occur (temporal, tissue/cell compartment, signaling), and, fourth, are the biological processes of the interacting molecules affected/regulated by the protein of interest? The Kaibuchi lab, as exemplified in the works by Taya et al. and Shinoda et al., elegantly address some of these questions in the context of DISC1 interactions with Grb2, Nudel (NDEL1), 14-3-3ε, and kinesin-1. The key findings of these papers are as follows:

1. Identification of the interaction sites, or more importantly,...  Read more

View all comments by Luiz Miguel Camargo

With the completion of the HapMap and its commercialization by Illumina and Affymetrix, it should be possible for researchers to find susceptibility alleles which have an odds ratio of >2 for any disorder, including Alzheimer disease, over the next couple of years. The expense will be high: Sample sizes of about 500 cases and 500 controls will be needed, and the cost per sample is on the order of $900. But if there are anymore genes with the effect size of ApoE out there, for AD or other diseases, we should now be able to find them.

View all comments by John Hardy

Q: Does the map provide enough resolution?
A: On average, the haplotype map has investigated about 1 SNP every 5,000 bases (i.e., 5 kb). For most applications this density should be sufficient to allow linkage disequilibrium mapping of common variants with at least moderate effects in genetically complex diseases. However, a phase 2 of the HapMap is planned which will probably more than quadruple this resolution.

Q: Will the HapMap help in complex diseases, where several variants on different chromosomes must interact, for example?
A: While the HapMap has many valuable uses in designing and interpreting future genetic association in AD and other diseases, it will unfortunately not help to better understand interactions between different genetic loci or non-genetic factors, because such interactions likely vary from phenotype to phenotype.

Q: Will the HapMap help in...  Read more

View all comments by Lars Bertram

The completion of the HapMap is a major advance for science, and one which will particularly benefit the field of psychiatry. Schizophrenia research has been hampered by a failure to replicate genetic linkage and association studies, and this may in part owe to population differences in allele frequency, haplotype structure, and the inability to select the proper genes and polymorphisms for analysis. The HapMap reduces the "search space" for genetic markers that will show associations with complex diseases, like schizophrenia, across samples, and will thus facilitate the causal polymorphisms that may be shared across these populations. The completion of the first phase of the HapMap is not just important as a milestone marking progress in mapping the human genome, but also it is important for the enhanced level of scientific inquiry it can enable.

View all comments by Stephen J. Glatt

The relationship between DISC1 and neuropsychiatric disorders, including schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, and bipolar disorder, has now been observed in several studies. Moreover, a number of studies have demonstrated that DISC1 appears to impact neurocognitive function. Nevertheless, the molecular mechanisms by which DISC1 could contribute to impaired CNS function are unclear, and these two papers shed light on this critical issue.

Millar et al. (2005) have followed the same strategy that they so successfully utilized in their initial DISC1 studies, identifying a translocation that associated with a psychotic illness. In contrast to DISC1, in which a pedigree was identified with a number of translocation carriers, this manuscript is based upon the identification of a single translocation carrier, who appears to manifest classic signs of schizophrenia, without evidence of mood dysregulation. Two genes are disrupted by this translocation: cadherin 8 and phosphodiesterase 4B (PDE4B). The...  Read more

View all comments by Anil Malhotra

This study describes an interesting genetic link between PDE4B (phosphodiesterase 4B) and schizophrenia that may be related to a physical interaction with DISC1 (disrupted in schizophrenia 1), another gene associated with the psychiatric disorder. The study is highly suggestive of a role for the PDE4B/DISC1 complex in schizophrenia. However, the mechanistic model suggested by the authors whereby DISC1 sequesters PDE4B in an inactive state seems overly speculative, given the results presented in this paper and in prior studies that have examined the regulation of PDE4B by phosphorylation in the absence of DISC1.

View all comments by Angus Nairn

Cognitive symptoms have emerged as an independent feature of schizophrenia that needs to be targeted for treatment independent of more well-known symptoms such as hallucinations and delusions. Indeed, the level of impairment in cognitive abilities is one of the strongest predictors of impaired adaptive life skills in patients with schizophrenia. The prefrontal cortex, critical for cognitive abilities such as working memory and executive functions, is well established to be dysfunctional in patients with schizophrenia. Although the significance of dopamine-related changes to the prefrontal cortex in schizophrenia has been extensively studied, noradrenergic changes are also important, but often overlooked. Moreover, second-generation antipsychotics, which partially address the reduced prefrontal dopamine activity in patients with schizophrenia, have only modest effects on the cognitive impairments associated with schizophrenia.

Alpha-2 noradrenergic agonists, such as the antihypertensive drug guanfacine, increase noradrenergic activity in the prefrontal cortex. Evidence...  Read more

View all comments by Joseph Friedman

Several recent studies on disruptions of the DISC1 gene in mice illustrate the great potential of genetic approaches to studying functions of putative schizophrenia susceptibility genes but also signal the complexity of the problem. An initial rationale for studying the effects of mutations in DISC1 came from the discovery of the chromosomal translocation, resulting in a breakpoint in the DISC1 gene that co-segregated with major mental illness in a Scottish family (reviewed by Porteous et al., 2006). These clinical findings were followed by a number of association studies, which reported that numerous SNPs across the gene were associated with schizophrenia and mood disorders and a variety of intermediate phenotypes, suggesting that other problems in the DISC1 gene may exist in other subjects/populations.

Recent animal models designed to mimic partial loss of DISC1 function suggested that DISC1 is necessary to support development of the cerebral cortex as its loss resulted in impaired neurite...  Read more

View all comments by Barbara K. Lipska

I am very glad that our colleagues at Johns Hopkins University have published a very intriguing paper in Cell, showing a novel role for DISC1 in adult hippocampus. This is very consistent with previous publications (Miyoshi et al., 2003; Kamiya et al., 2005; and others; reviewed by Ishizuka et al., 2006), and adds a new insight into a key role for DISC1 during neurodevelopment. In short, DISC1 is a very important regulator in various phases of neurodevelopment, which is reinforced in this study. Specifically, DISC1 is crucial for regulating neuronal migration and dendritic development—for acceleration in the developing cerebral cortex, and for braking in the adult hippocampus.

There is precedence for signaling molecules playing the same role in different contexts, with the resulting molecular activity going in different directions. For example, FOXO3 (a member of the Forkhead transcription factor family) plays a role in...  Read more

View all comments by Akira Sawa

Recent findings, including the interactome study by Camargo et al., 2007, and this beautiful study by Duan and colleagues, implicate DISC1 (a leading candidate schizophrenia susceptibility gene) in synaptic function, consistent with prevailing ideas of the disorder as one of the synapse and connectivity (see Stephan et al., 2006). As we learn more about DISC1 and its protein partners, evidence demonstrating the importance of microtubules in the regulation of several neuronal processes (see Eastwood et al., 2006, for review) suggests that DISC1’s interactions with microtubule associated proteins (MAPs) may underpin its pathogenic influence.

DISC1 has been shown to bind to several MAPs (e.g., MAP1A, MIPT3) and other proteins important in regulating microtubule function (see Kamiya et al., 2005; Porteous et al., 2006). As a key component of the cell...  Read more

View all comments by Sharon Eastwood

Some observations on the new report by Li and colleagues: this work is the first to map subregions of DISC1 and to show that a region that binds Nudel and LIS1 is important in generating schizophrenia-like perturbations in vivo. The authors express DISC1 C-terminus in mice, which interacts with Nudel and LIS1. They showed less native mouse DISC1 associations with Nudel mouse following gene induction. This suggests a dominant-negative mechanism.

No data was shown on native DISC1 levels following induction. Work from the Sawa lab shows that if murine DISC1 levels are reduced in non-engineered mice using RNAi, severe perturbations in development of nervous system are seen (Kamiya et al., 2005); however, behavior was not measured in this study. Severe perturbations would be expected based on the neonatal ventral hippocampal lesion model. In this latter model early brain lesions lead to later impairments in PPI and other behaviors consistent with schizophrenic-like behavior.

They use a promoter only expressed in the forebrain,...  Read more

View all comments by John Roder

DISC1 may be a promising entry point to explore important disease pathways for schizophrenia and related mental conditions; thus, animal models that can provide us with insights into the pathways involving DISC1 may be helpful. In this sense, the new animal model reported by Li et al. (Silva and Cannon’s group at UCLA) has great significance in this field.

They made mice expressing a short domain of DISC1 that may block interaction of DISC1 with a set of protein interactors, including NUDEL/NDEL1 and LIS1. This approach, if the domain is much shorter, will be an important methodology in exploring the disease pathways based on protein interactions. Although the manuscript is excellent, and appropriate as the first report, the domain expressed in the transgenic mice can interact with more than 30-40 proteins, and the phenotypes that the authors observed might not be attributable to the disturbance of protein interactions of DISC1 and NUDEL or LIS1.

Now we have at least five different types of animal models for DISC1, all of which have unique advantages and...  Read more

View all comments by Akira Sawa

On the DISC1 bus
You wait ages for a bus, then a string of them come one behind the other. First, Koike et al. (2006) reported that the 129 strain of mouse had a small detection of the DISC1 gene and this was associated with a deficit on a learning task. The interpretation of this observation was somewhat complicated by the subsequent recognition that the majority, if not all, major DISC1 isoforms are unaffected by the deletion, but this needs further work (Ishizuka et al., 2007). Then, Clapcote et al. (2007) provided a very detailed characterization of two independent ENU-induced mouse missense mutations of DISC1, showing selective brain shrinkage and marked behavioral abnormalities that in one mutant were schizophrenia-like, the other more akin to mood disorder. Importantly, these phenotypes could be differentially rescued by antipsychotics or antidepressants. The main finger pointed to disruption of the interaction with PDE4...  Read more

View all comments by David J. Porteous

The answer is unequivocally, “yes”
In co-highlighting the papers from Need et al., 2009, and Tomppo et al., 2009, you pose the question “CNV’s, interacting loci or both?” to which my immediate answer is an unequivocal “yes,” but it actually goes further than that. These two studies, interesting in their own rights, add just two more pieces of evidence now accumulated from case only, case-control, and family-based linkage on the genetic architecture of schizophrenia. Thus, we can reject with confidence a single evolutionary and genetic origin for schizophrenia. If it were so, it would have been found already by the plethora of genomewide studies now completed, studies specifically designed to detect causal variants, should they exist, which are both common to most if not all subjects and ancient in origin—the Common Disease, Common Variant (CDCV) hypothesis.

Moreover, for DISC1, NRG1, NRXN1, and a few others, the criteria for causality are met in some subjects, but none of these is the sole cause of schizophrenia. Their net contributions to individual and...  Read more

View all comments by David J. Porteous

The results reported by Tomppo et al. and Need et al. collectively instantiate the complexities of the genetic architecture underlying risk for psychiatric illness. Paradoxically, however, while the results of Need et al. suggest that the answer to the complex question of risk genes for schizophrenia (SZ) may be found by searching a very select population for rare changes in genetic sequence, the results of Tomppo et al. suggest that the answer may be found by searching for common variants in large heterogeneous populations. So which is it? Is SZ the result of rare, novel genetic mutations or an accumulation of common ones? Such a conundrum is not a novel predicament in the process of scientific inquiry and such conundrums are often resolved by the reconciliation of both opposing views. Thus, if we allow history to serve as our guide it seems reasonable that the answer to the current question of what genetic mechanisms are responsible for SZ, is that SZ is caused by both rare and common variants.

Although considerable efforts, by our lab and others, are currently being...  Read more

View all comments by Pamela DeRosse
View all comments by Anil Malhotra

Has anyone considered the possibility that the CNVs found to be elevated in schizophrenia versus controls could be a peripheral effect and perhaps not present in brain tissue? For example, the diet of the typical schizophrenia patient is poor, and it is conceivable that chronic folate deficiency could predispose to problems in DNA structure or repair in lymphocytes. Thus, the CNVs could be an effect of the illness, and not a cause. Someone needs to do the experiment that compares CNVs in blood to those in the brain of the same individual. And then we need studies of the stability of CNVs over the lifetime of an individual.

View all comments by James Kennedy

The papers by Need et al. and Tomppo et al. seem to present conflicting evidence for the involvement of common or rare variants in the etiology of schizophrenia.

On the one hand, Need et al., in a very large and well-powered sample, find no evidence for involvement of any common SNPs or CNVs. Importantly, they show that while any one SNP with a small effect and modest allelic frequency might be missed by their analysis, the likelihood that all such putative SNPs would be missed is vanishingly small. They come to the reasonable conclusion that common variants are unlikely to play a major role in the etiology of schizophrenia, except under a highly specific and implausible genetic model. Does this sound the death knell for the common variants, polygenic model of schizophrenia? Yes and no. These and other empirical data are consistent with theoretical analyses which show that the currently popular purely polygenic model, without some gene(s) of large effect, cannot explain familial risk patterns (Hemminki et al., 2007;   Read more

View all comments by Kevin J. Mitchell

If schizophrenia and autism are on a spectrum, how can there be people who are both autistic and schizophrenic? I know of a few people who suffer from both diseases.

View all comments by Katie Rodriguez

One Hundred Years of Insanity: The Relationship Between Schizophrenia and Autism
The great Colombian author Gabriel García Márquez reified the cyclical nature of history in his Nobel Prize-winning 1967 book, One Hundred Years of Solitude. Eugen Bleuler’s less-famous book Dementia Præcox or the Group of Schizophrenias, originally published in 1911, saw first use of the term “autism,” a form of solitude manifest as withdrawal from reality in schizophrenia. This neologism, about to celebrate its centenary, epitomizes an astonishing cycle of reification and change in nosology, a cycle only now coming into clear view as molecular-genetic data confront the traditional, age-old categories of psychiatric classification.

The term autism was, of course, redefined by Leo Kanner (1943) for a childhood psychiatric condition first considered as a subset of schizophrenia, then regarded as quite distinct (Rutter, 1972) or even opposite to it (Rimland, 1964; Crespi and Badcock, 2008), and most recently seen by some researchers as returning to its original...  Read more

View all comments by Bernard Crespi