The Meaning of the Human Genome Project for Neuropsychiatric Disorders

摘要

The past 3 years have witnessed a series of replicable, credible, and increasingly useful genetic discoveries in autism, schizophrenia, and bipolar disorder. I cannot emphasize enough the significance of this progress. Neuropsychiatric disorders are outsized contributors to global disease burden, yet treatment development has reached a near standstill. The problem is that the brain, with its myriad cell types and complex circuitry, represents such a difficult scientific frontier. Because genes play powerful roles in neuropsychiatric disorders, identification of causal variation could provide invaluable clues to their pathogenesis. Sadly, the genetic architecture of neuropsychiatric disorders is fiendishly complex, but unlike other areas of medicine wrestling with genetic complexity, psychiatry lacks objective phenotypic markers.