Schizophrenia is a multi-factorial disease characterized by a high heritability and environmental risk factors. In recent years, an increasing number of researchers worldwide have started investigating the "two-hit hypothesis" of schizophrenia predicting that genetic and environmental risk factors (GxE) interactively cause the development of the disorder. This work is starting to produce valuab...

Hirschsprung disease (HSCR, OMIM 142623) is a developmental disorder characterized by the absence of ganglion cells along variable lengths of the distal gastrointestinal tract, which results in tonic contraction of the aganglionic gut segment and functional intestinal obstruction. The RET proto-oncogene is the major gene for HSCR with differential contributions of its rare and common, coding an...

Schizophrenia is characterized by positive and negative symptoms and cognitive dysfunction. The glutamate hypothesis of schizophrenia has been hypothesized to explain the negative symptoms and cognitive deficits better than the dopamine hypothesis alone. Therefore, we aimed to evaluate whether glutamatergic variants such as d-amino acid oxidase (DAO), DAO activator (DAOA)/G72, and neuregulin 1 ...

Grb2-associated binders (Gabs) are scaffolding proteins implicated in cell signaling via receptor tyrosine kinases including neuregulin-1(NRG1)-ErbB receptor signaling, which is essential for peripheral nerve myelination. Here, we show that the conditional removal of Gab1 from Schwann cells resulted in hypomyelination and abnormal development of Remak bundles. In contrast, hypomyelination was n...

schizophrenia is a severe neuropsychiatric disorder with symptoms such as hallucination, delusion and mental disorder. it is a complex disorder, in which genetic components play a crucial role in its pathogenesis. among candidate genes for schizophrenia, neuregulin 1 (nrg1) gene is the most important gene,  association of which with the illness has been confirmed in several studies. single nucl...

OBJECTIVE Neuregulin1 (NRG1) gene is among the most promising candidate genes for schizophrenia. This gene is located on 8p22-p12, a region with a reported linkage to schizophrenia. Several studies have reported an association between schizophrenia and the 5' end polymorphisms in this gene. However, some studies have failed to confirm the role of NRG1 gene in the pathogenesis of schizophrenia. ...

Candida albicans is a dimorphic fungus that can interconvert between yeast and filamentous forms. Its ability to regulate morphogenesis is strongly correlated with virulence. Tup1, a transcriptional repressor, and the signaling molecule farnesol are both capable of negatively regulating the yeast to filamentous conversion. Based on this overlap in function, we tested the hypothesis that the cel...

The use of cannabis is a well-established component risk factor for schizophrenia, particularly in adolescent individuals with genetic predisposition for the disorder. Alterations to the endocannabinoid system have been found in the prefrontal cortex of patients with schizophrenia. Thus, we assessed whether molecular alterations exist in the endocannabinoid signalling pathway during brain devel...

Post-mitotic neurons are generated from neural progenitor cells (NPCs) at the expense of their proliferation. Molecular and cellular mechanisms that regulate neuron production temporally and spatially should impact on the size and shape of the brain. While transcription factors such as neurogenin1 (neurog1) and neurod govern progression of neurogenesis as cell-intrinsic mechanisms, recent studi...

Modulating molecular chaperones is emerging as an attractive approach to treat neurodegenerative diseases associated with protein aggregation, DPN (diabetic peripheral neuropathy) and possibly, demyelinating neuropathies. KU-32 [N-(7-((2R,3R,4S,5R)-3,4-dihydroxy-5-methoxy-6,6-dimethyl-tetrahydro-2H-pyran-2-yloxy)-8-methyl-2-oxo-2H-chromen-3-yl)acetamide] is a small molecule inhibitor of Hsp90 (...