The Role of Epigenetics in Altered Gene Expression Involved in GABAergic Transmission in the Cerebellum of Schizophrenia Patients/Dr. Perrone-Bizzozero and W. Michael Bullock Reply

摘要

[...] recent reports suggest that reduced expression of GAD^sub 67^ (the GABA synthesizing enzyme encoded by the GAD1 gene) in schizophrenia patients is associated with both specific polymorphisms in the promoter region (1) and altered epigenetic regulation (2, 3), and we apologize for the oversight of not citing the latter in our article. Along these lines, we recently found that Golgi cells are primarily affected by chronic intermittent exposure to relatively low doses of phencyclidine (data available upon request from W.M. Bullock et al.), suggesting that N-methyl-D-aspartic acid hypofunction could lead to decreases in GABA synthesis and neurotransmission in schizophrenia. [...] we feel that it is very important to determine the causes of the decrease in GAD^sub 67^ mRNA in postmortem cerebellar tissue, and we plan to address whether these deficits are associated with genetic factors and/or epigenetic dysregulation in future studies.