Genome-wide identification of genes for anorexia and their cascade analysis on disease development by functional study

饮食失调是一种精神障碍，自20世纪90年代末以来，在年轻人中急剧增加。然而，其治疗策略或预后方法尚未确定。在这里描述的研究中，我们首先根据我们的微卫星标记全基因组关联分析确定了该疾病的易感基因。对于鉴定出的易感基因，我们采用高灵敏度酵母双杂交法，然后在哺乳动物细胞中进行免疫沉淀分析。通过这些分析，我们发现了数十种与疾病相关的相互作用因子，它们的身份提示了易感基因的分子功能。我们进一步通过蛋白-蛋白相互作用分析对其中一个易感基因进行了详细的分析，并确定了一个83个氨基酸的区域，该区域对分子相互作用和细胞定位都很重要，因此是一个很好的候选药物开发靶点。

An eating disorder is a mental disorder which sharply increased since the late 1990s for people of young age. Its treatment strategies or prognostic methods, however, have yet to be established. In the study described here, we first identified susceptible genes of the disease, based on our genome-wide association analysis with microsatellite markers. To the identified susceptible genes, we applied our high-sensitivity yeast two-hybrid method, followed by immunoprecipitation analysis in mammalian cells. Through these analyses, we found dozens of disease-related interactors, identities of which suggest molecular function of the susceptible genes. We further analyzed one of the susceptible genes by protein-protein interaction assays in details and identified an 83 amino-acid region which is important for both molecular interactions and cellular localization and is, therefore, a good candidate as a drug development target.