Transcriptome profiling of the human dorsal striatum in bipolar disorder

Bipolar disorder (BD) is a highly heritable and heterogeneous mental illness whose manifestations often include impulsive and risk-taking behavior. This particular phenotype suggests that abnormal striatal function could be involved in BD etiology, yet most transcriptomic studies of this disorder have concentrated on cortical brain regions. We report the first transcriptome profiling by RNA-Seq of the human dorsal striatum comparing bipolar and control subjects. Differential expression analysis and functional pathway enrichment analysis were performed to identify changes in gene expression that correlate with BD status. Further co-expression and enrichment analyses were performed to identify sets of correlated genes that show association to BD. Overall design: Total RNA samples were isolated from 36 postmortem dorsal striatum subjects (18 bipolar and 18 control) and sequenced. One outlier sample was removed and 35 samples (18 bipolar and 17 control) were analyzed.

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Pacifico R, Davis RL