- Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine say they have discovered evidence of 12-hour patterns of gene function in the human brain.
- The researchers noted that some of these cycles were absent or modified in the brains of people with schizophrenia who had died.
- While disruptions to 24-hour biological rhythms are common among individuals diagnosed with schizophrenia, little is known about shorter cycles of gene activity in the brain.
In a new study, published in the journal PLOS Biology, researchers are highlighting how individuals diagnosed with schizophrenia commonly experience disruptions in various 24-hour biological rhythms.
These include sleep/wake patterns, hormone secretion, and gene functioning in the prefrontal cortex.
However, scientists still don’t fully understand how genes work in the brain when it comes to cycles shorter than the typical 24-hour sleep-wake cycle.
This is true for both people with schizophrenia and people without the mental health condition.
The new study involved a time-of-death analysis to investigate the gene activity’s 12-hour rhythms within postmortem brains since gene transcript levels can’t be measured in live brains.
The researchers specifically concentrated on the part of the brain called the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex.
This area of the brain is linked with cognitive symptoms and other irregularities in gene expression rhythms known to occur in schizophrenia.
The team say they discovered several genes in the this area of the brain that exhibit 12-hour patterns of activity.
Specifically, gene activity associated with the creation of connections between neurons was at its highest in the afternoon and evening.
The activity levels of genes linked to mitochondrial function, which is responsible for providing cellular energy, were highest in the morning and evening.
The researchers found that postmortem brains of people with schizophrenia had fewer genes that follow the 12-hour activity cycles and those…
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