2007 Edge World Question: What are you optimistic about?
This year, The Edge asks: What are you optimistic about? Why? Dr. Samuel Barondes, Neurobiologist and Psychiatrist, University of California San Francisco; Author, Better Than Prozac, is optimistic about finding mental illness genes. Here’s an excerpt of his answer.
To have a good chance of identifying the combinations of genes that influence the development of schizophrenia or bipolar disorder two things are needed: thousands of DNA samples, each from a person who is clearly suffering from the disorder being studied (to compare with controls); and an affordable technique for scrutinizing each DNA sample in sufficient detail to identify all the salient genetic variations. Both these requirements are now being met. Groups of researchers have been collecting the requisite number of DNA samples from patients with clear-cut cases of schizophrenia or bipolar disorder; and the costs of detailed genomic analyses keep coming down. When the numbers of samples are big enough and the costs of analysis are small enough, the relevant genes should be found. Already a few gene variants have been tentatively implicated as risk factors for schizophrenia.
Tags: edge, world question, optimism, prozac, samuel barondes, psychiatry, mental health, mental illness, genetics, genes, dna, diseases, illness, health
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