The Genetic Role of Schizophrenia

Schizophrenia is a well-known genetic disorder that affects the way a person feels, thinks, and behaves. Individuals with this disease can undergo psychotic, negative, or cognitive symptoms, which are all at a risk of being misdiagnosed. This research was conducted to determine the genes and proteins that are involved in the development of schizophrenia. Not only are people at a risk of developing schizophrenia when they have specific genes and proteins, but mutations of other genes can also cause an increased risk of developing this disease. While schizophrenia is known to be a highly hereditary disease, epigenetics also plays a key role in the development of this disease. Epigenetics is described as the study of how your environment and behaviors can affect how your genes work. These factors can lead to more complications and changes in genes and genomes, and once these genes become modified, they can be easily transferred hereditarily within their family. Most treatments for schizophrenia include antipsychotic medications and psychosocial treatments, but family and education support and assertive community treatments are also highly used. CRISPR-associated nuclease 9 is a new technological advancement that manipulates the non-coding regions in a person’s DNA and works to correct mutations in genes. With mutations in the ncRNA’s in schizophrenia, this new technology will be able to edit these mutations and be a useful tool in schizophrenia research. While new advancements have been made in determining the reason for the development of schizophrenia, there is still no known cure for the disease