Mapping the genetic architecture of global gene and exon expression in the human brain to understand common diseases

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Diseases affecting the brain are common and often devastating. Unfortunately, we know relatively little about why certain people suffer from psychiatric conditions like schizophrenia, or neurological conditions like Alzheimer?s and Parkinson?s disease. However, in the past 3 years scientists have been able to show that some individuals inherit risk factors in their DNA, which make them more likely to develop these conditions. Although this has been an amazing step forward, because most of the inherited risk factors are not within the part of the DNA that codes for proteins we still do not understand how these risk factors change the way cells in the brain behave to cause disease. Without this type of information we cannot begin to develop new and more effective treatments. The aim of our work is to fill this gap in knowledge by investigating how inherited risk factors influence gene expression in the human brain so that we can better understand the causes of neurological and psychiatric disease. We hope to identify genetic variants in the DNA which not only increase the risk of having a disease of the brain, but also affect gene expression in brain regions already known to be important in disease. In this way we can start to pinpoint the systems or pathways in brain cells, which are causing the problem and hopefully provide the basic information that will lead to new treatments.In this study we will use human brain tissue that has been donated for research by the deceased?s family to study the effect of inherited risk factors on the quantity and type of gene expression in different areas of the brain. We will use microarray technology to obtain detailed genetic and gene expression information about human brain tissue. The huge amount of information generated will be carefully analysed. The information this study will produce is likely to be of use to many researchers investigating a wide range of different diseases of the brain. Therefore, we will make sure that the results are made publicly available as soon as possible, while at the same time ensuring that information that could be used to identify individuals is protected.Thus, we hope to be able to improve the understanding of the molecules and pathways that cause diseases of the brain and provide the basis for new treatments for diseases like Parkinson?s or schizophrenia.