Schizophrenia genes: characteristics of function and protein interaction networks

Schizophrenia is a heritable complex disease that involves multiple genes interacting themselves or with environment. Its genetic mechanisms have not been well understood. Currently, studies have revealed hundreds of genes associated with schizophrenia. This provides us an opportunity to explore the molecular characteristics of schizophrenia genes (SCZGenes) using genomics and systems biology approaches. In this study, we selected SCZGenes based on the published association studies and examined their functional features by comparing to the neurodevelopmental genes and control genes. We revealed that SCZGenes have strong correlation with neurodevelopment and other functional term. We further investigated the topological characteristics of SCZGenes in the human protein interaction network. We found that SCZGenes do not tend to encode hub proteins; rather they interact in a modest degree. Finally, we extracted SCZGenes subnetworks, which may be further analyzed with other information.