A genetic database for bipolar disorder and its overlap with schizophrenia and major depressive disorder was developed by Institute of Psychology

Author: Dr. WANG Jing’s Research Team

Institute of Psychology, Key Lab of Mental Health, Chinese Academy of Sciences

Following the successful development of ADHDgene and MK4MDD, the team led by Prof. Wang Jing from Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences developed another database -- BDgene: a genetic database for bipolar disorder (BD) and its overlap with schizophrenia (SZ) and major depressive disorder (MDD). As a central genetic database for BD and the first cross-disorder database for BD and SZ/MDD, BDgene provides not only a comprehensive review of current genetic research, but also high-confidence candidate genes and pathways for understanding of BD mechanism and shared etiology among its relevant diseases. BDgene is freely available at http://bdgene.psych.ac.cn.

Bipolar disorder is a common psychiatric disorder with complex genetic architecture and its heritability is estimated to range from 80%-85%. It is important to explore genetic susceptibility of the disease for early diagnosis and treatment. Meanwhile, BD shares overlapping clinical features, like psychosis and suicidality, as well as some comorbidities with SZ and MDD. To explore BD-related genetic factors and its shared ones with SZ/MDD, Dr. Wang’s team developed BDgene database by integrating multiple types of literature-reported genetic factors of BD and shared ones from published cross-disorder studies among BD and SZ/MDD. These datasets not only presented a systematic review of current genetic research on BD, but also laid down a solid foundation for discovery of shared mechanism of BD and its highly relevant diseases. In addition, in-depth analysis based on integration of the published data was implemented. These results from analyses will help to provide reliable guide for experimental verification and stimulate novel academic perspectives. Moreover, the detection of disease-related genes and their potential biological pathways might promote the early identification and diagnosis of diseases, and ultimately to provide clues for discovery of new drugs. To ensure its effectiveness, BDgene will be updated quarterly to maintain an update-to-date resource.

This work was supported by the State Administration of Foreign Experts Affairs of Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS/SAFEA) International Partnership Program for Creative Research Teams (Grant No.Y2CX131003), the Knowledge Innovation Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Grant No. KSCX2-EW-J-8), and Key Laboratory of Mental Health, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Chang SH, Gao L, Li Z, Zhang WN, Du Y, Wang J (2013) BDgene: A Genetic Database for Bipolar Disorder and Its Overlap With Schizophrenia and Major Depressive Disorder. Biol Psychiatry. doi:10.1016/j.biopsych.2013.04.016

The study has been published in Biological Psychiatry:

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0006322313003867