Comparing GWAS and Brain Structure-Specific Gene Expression Profiles Identifies Psychiatric Disorder-Related Brain Struc

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LETTER TO THE EDITOR

Comparing GWAS and Brain Structure-Specific Gene Expression Profiles Identifies Psychiatric Disorder-Related Brain Structures at Different Developmental Stages Xin Qi1 • Cuiyan Wu1 • Yanan Du1 • Shiqiang Cheng1 • Yan Wen1 • Mei Ma1 • Chujun Liang1 • Li Liu1 • Bolun Cheng1 • Lu Zhang1 • Ping Li1 Feng Zhang1



Received: 18 August 2019 / Accepted: 14 March 2020 Ó Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences, CAS 2020

Dear Editor, Psychiatric disorders are a group of mental disorders characterized by psychological or behavioral disabilities. Losing of the ability to work and assuming the extensive cost of long-term treatment, patients with psychiatric disorders are forced to support a heavy financial and medical burden. The growth and development of brain structures are dynamic, and different brain structures have major and specific functions to control behavior and performance. It has been demonstrated that the dysfunction of different brain structures involved in different psychiatric disorders is due to widespread alterations in the functional connectivity in the brain. Because of the dynamic alterations during brain growth and development, it is reasonable to infer that different psychiatric disorders are involved in the dysfunction of different brain structures at different life stages. Genetic factors display a strong component in the etiology of psychiatric disorders. Gene expression is regulated by heredity, and the integration of genome-wide association studies (GWASs) and gene expression profile datasets has become a hot topic in recent studies, providing

Xin Qi and Cuiyan Wu have contributed equally to this work.

Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s12264-020-00521-7) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. & Feng Zhang [email protected] 1

Key Laboratory of Trace Elements and Endemic Diseases of National Health and Family Planning Commission, School of Public Health, Health Science Center, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an 710061, China

new insights into the mechanism underlying complex diseases. Based on these, it is feasible to further investigate the mechanisms of complex diseases through integrating GWASs and expression profile datasets. However, there are few studies comparing GWASs and gene expression profile datasets with the consideration of different brain structures and developmental stages for psychiatric disorders. In this study, we explored the abnormal brain structures associated with different psychiatric disorders at different life stages, through a comparative analysis of brain structure-specific and age-specific gene expression profiles and GWAS datasets for psychiatric disorders (Supplementary materials). The mRNA expression profiles of 16 brain structures at 13 developmental stages were derived from BrainSpan (Atlas of the Developing Human Brain, http:// www.brainspan.org/). To ensure the sample sizes of gene expression profil