Health

The new year is starting with some good news for individuals stricken with schizophrenia and a host of other neurological disorders. Schizophrenia, which has been a bit of a catch-all disorder in which victims suffer from extreme paranoia, delusions, dissociative thinking and even hallucinations, has long been thought to be a genetic disorder. After more than a decade of looking for evidence of schizeophrenia in gene, new evidence shows that the disease actually originates in the cell around the gene.

Scientists at Scripps Research Institute have recently found that schizophrenia is not a genetic disorder at all. In fact, it’s an epigenetic disorder, one cause by the structures of the cell that house our DNA. Particular to disorders like schizophrenia, there is a protein that functions a bit like a storage rack in the cell called a histone. The DNA, which would not otherwise fit within a single cell, is wrapped around the histone. However, in order for the DNA to express itself the histone has a tail which undergoes a perpetual chemical reaction called acetylation, which relaxes the DNA and allows it to express. Then acetylation takes place and the DNA once again contracts around the histone. The histones and DNA create chromatin, which manages the constant cycle of relaxation and contraction that allows all the genes of a cell to functions properly.