Learning the Genetic Causes for Schizophrenia through Copy - Number Variations

Schizophrenia is a mental disorder that causes lifelong disability. The most common symptoms are auditory hallucinations, paranoia, and delusions. At least 1% of Americans have this illness. [1] Factors that cause schizophrenia are both genetic and non-genetic. Research has shown that gene plays a significant role in schizophrenia through studies on twins. However, the genetic aberrations associated with schizophrenia have been hard to pin down. A large number of genome scan projects have reported linkage in three chromosomal regions, but none of these regions has produced strong support for linkage in the majority of the projects. [2] Unlike some diseases that can be caused by a single defective gene such as Huntington’s disease, schizophrenia is much more complex and elusive. [1, 3]